Traders in Nebbi Municipality are demanding compensation from local authorities after construction works for a taxi park and bus terminal in the area hit a snag.
The traders, who spoke to this publication, said about 534 of them paid Shs500,000 each for 4×4 metre rooms, 418 paid Shs200,000 each while eight of them paid Shs3 million each for bus terminal spaces, but have never realised value for their money for the last four years due to the stalled project.
In an interview with Monitor on Tuesday, the secretary of Nebbi Drivers and Transporters Cooperatives, Mr Powel Ongei, said the traders got Shs40 million bank loans with the hope of generating revenues on completion of the project.
‘The municipal council must bear the losses that were incurred. We lost both the money and materials at the site in the process of constructing the lockups, which mostly stopped at the ring beam level,’ Mr Ongei said.
The traders who had paid for the spaces, were to occupy them after completion. They now accuse the municipal authorities of failing to enforce the law and act technically to guide the developers since there was delay in the construction of Nebbi Modern Market.
The municipality council had hoped that the project would generate more than Shs500m annually in local revenue.
The project, on completion, was expected to boost local revenue for the council in an effort to implement the basic priority of garbage collection and road maintenance but failed to meet its targets for the last four years.
The Nebbi Municipal Mayor, Mr Geoffrey Ngiriker, said the construction of the taxi park and bus terminal was aimed at providing temporary accommodation for the traders who will be displaced by the construction of Nebbi Modern Market and also de-congest the street loading and unloading of passengers and parking.
Local developers who signed an agreement under the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) with Nebbi Municipality to construct a taxi park and bus terminal are also demanding compensation after the project works stalled.
Why the project stalled
Mr Ngiriker explained that the project stalled because some of the developers were cash-strapped due to the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and halted most of their activities thereafter.
He said with the coming of Uganda Cities Infrastructure Modernisation Initiative Development (UCIMID) programme, they hoped the project would be completed and the developers would benefit eventually.
‘The municipal council will engage the local developers on how to harmonise the compensation since the Nebbi taxi park and bus terminal project will be taken by UCIMID in the next financial year,’ Ngiriker said.
A local developer of the project, Mr Mohammed Ozelle, said due to poor planning by the municipal council, the developers lost billions of money in the construction.
‘We buried all our money in the construction with expectation of immediate realisation of the revenue but now, we are all poor and failing to service the loans we acquired,’ Mr Ozelle said.
The Municipal Principal Physical Planner, Ms Flavia Oyenboth, said the council has been allocated Shs2.4 billion from the UCIMID programme. The funds have been earmarked for the construction of Nebbi taxi park and bus terminal, with the work slated to commence in the next financial year.
Ms Oyenyboth assured the developers that they would be compensated as sitting tenants for 20 years after the completion of the taxi park under the UCIMID programme.
‘We will compensate the developers as the sitting tenants based on the agreed resolution with the council through mutual understanding,’ she said.
Aboout the project
The memorandum of understanding between the developers and Nebbi Municipality was signed in 2021. The municipality council had hoped that the project would generate more than Shs500 million annually in local revenue.
The developers would use the lock-ups at taxi and bus park terminals for 15 years from the date of commissioning, but the project stalled and the site was abandoned.