KCCA, Again, Halts Construction in Bugolobi Wetland

In one of the notices issued to a developer, KCCA instructed Majestic Commodities Ltd to "halt all works until the environmental and drainage conditions have been complied with or resolved."

NATIONAL | The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has halted all ongoing development in the Bugolobi-Namuwongo wetlands to address the critical concerns raised by environmental advocates and local communities.

In one of the notices issued to a developer, the Authority instructed Majestic Commodities Ltd to "halt all works until the environmental and drainage conditions have been complied with or resolved."

Other developers in the wetland include Zhong Zhong, which has been running outlets dealing in ceramics and was, by November 2022, deeply expanding into the swamp.

In its November 7 notice to Majestic Commodities Ltd, KCCA cited the Building Control Act, 2013 and the Building Control Regulations Act, 2020, warning that "failure to comply is an offence and will be prosecuted."

"Take note that the building operation being carried out at your site located at Bugolobi is contrary to the Building Control Act, 2013, the Buildings Control Regulations, 2020, and the National Building Code, 2019," the notice, signed by the physical planner for Nakawa Division, Mr. Nzamba Kamali, reads in part.

It is the umpteenth time authorities are intervening in the Bugolobi Wetlands encroachment issue, with previous decisions by environment watchdog NEMA and KCCA, among others, always amounting to mere empty threats.

At the center of the issues over the last few years has been Majestic Commodities Ltd, a private developer that has been building about a dozen residential apartments in the wetland.

The identity of the ownership of Majestic Commodities Ltd could not be readily established, but how it has kept pushing back from the controversial acquisition of plots of land to the backfilling of the wetland and now construction suggests they must be well connected with the powers-that-be.

In November 2022, the former KCCA deputy executive director stopped the activities of Majestic Commodities from backfill and construction works on Plots 1-5 Mpanga Drive and 67,69,71,73-81 Mpanga Close, Bugolobi.

In the past, NEMA had also required Majestic Commodities Ltd and other developers to offset an adequate buffer for the water drainage and implement the drainage masterplan for the area at all times to cater for the runoff originating from the new developments and ensure that the wetland below the approved area for the development is not silted.

Eng. Luyambazi said two years ago that the developer must not proceed until such a time that public drainage and road works are completed to the satisfaction of the Authority.

He said the “current backfilling works of the wetland in the absence of an alternative drainage system in place has not only caused public outcry but it has also exacerbated the poor drainage problem and flooding we are experiencing as a city.”

The Bugolobi swamp is part of the great Nakivubo Wetlands, a key water catchment area for the capital Kampala.

With the city now prone to flooding at a teardrop, authorities have been left looking embarrassed whenever it drizzles. However, efforts to push back and reclaim wetlands only work on paper.

More than two decades ago, the government proposed that Nakivubo be converted into a wetland reserve given its importance in filtering wastewater from Kampala before it enters Lake Victoria, regulating flooding, and conserving fish and other aquatic life.

But wealthy individuals, well-connected people, and politicians have continued to backfill the wetlands with reckless abandon, with areas as far away from the wetland as Shell Bugolobi along Luthuli Avenue prone to flooding whenever it drizzles.

In 2009, Major-General Kahinda Otafiire, the minister of internal affairs, famously clashed with then Kampala Central Division Chairman Godfrey Nyakana over plots in the Bugolobi Wetlands.

In a classic rebuttal, Gen. Otafiire distanced himself from any activities in the swamp, saying he was neither a frog nor a crocodile to live in a wetland.

In 2017, a Cabinet committee led by the Office of the Prime Minister determined that parts of the swamp were vanquished — had lost their ecological character.

The committee, which recommended allowing developers to promote alternative land use in the parts that were declared vanquished, said land titles had been issued in parts of the swamp before the 1995 Constitution was promulgated.

The government first titled the wetland (Bugolobi section) on April 1, 1987, and allocated it to East African Clay Products, then to Nyumba ya Chuma on April 15, 1989.

The land was a subject of Constitutional Petition number 13 of 2010 in which the ownership of the land was confirmed as Uganda Land Commission (ULC).

According to various media reports, ULC allocated the said land to Nextel Ltd on March 2, 2010, and then to Majestic Commodities Ltd on October 27, 2010.

Cabinet, on the recommendation of the Policy Committee on Environment on June 7, 2017, exempted the said land together with the adjacent UBC land from any title cancellation based on the fact that these were titled lands before wetlands were protected by the Constitution.

NEMA issued a certificate to Majestic Commodities for the development of warehouses on May 25, 2011, under certificate number NEMA/EIA/3730.

Later, the environment watchdog issued another certificate, number NEMA/EIA/14682, for the construction of residential houses issued on March 22, 2021.

The return of the Bugolobi Wetland issue with the familiar developers suggests it just will not go away. It is like a pattern, a seasonal affair with that reminder to the developer to fulfill "this and that" to get going again.

And there is no end in sight, probably not before the swamp is entirely swallowed up.