We congratulate President Museveni upon being re-elected to the top office. Even though many incidents marred his election, it is decent to applaud him. Now, the hard work begins. Among your to-do list, Your Excellency, there is a consensus among the community in Uganda that the security of people and their property needs to be given serious attention.
As we all know, for many years, people in urban centers, and communities around the countryside have had to live in fear, especially during late hours of the night. People continue to live in fear because of the attacks from groups of people who organize themselves to take advantage of the many security gaps.
So, criminal groups continue to launch attacks on people who, for many reasons, return home, and others who are going out to try to earn a living for their families. At night, they block roads in an attempt to trap motorists, and they rob, loot, and vandalise cars. They even kill people.
To cope with these challenges, community members have been enhancing their security by carrying out surveillance among themselves. People in some urban centers know them as ‘aguu’ (hustlers). People continue to suffer at the hands of these organized groups. At certain times of the night, it is prohibitive to move because they are very much in action. So, in the urban places, criminal violence is now a routine.
There is a need to investigate and identify the groups that attack people to address the problem permanently. From the general public, these attackers are young community members who are hustling to survive. This means that the young community members are also being trained to sustain crime. If this is the case, then there is an urgent need to mobilise more youth (beyond all other youth initiatives) and engage them in activities that will make them useful.
By engaging them, they will not have the time to stay out in the cold nights to waylay unsuspecting victims. There are no statistics to give for now; however, it is widely believed that homicide cases are continuing to rise. Then, there is crime associated with drug use. A lot of youth these days are being influenced by drugs. And we are continuing to see many cases of gang actions meting brutality against innocent people.
These gang activities continue to stop people from going about their daily lives. It is highly risky to walk across certain areas of towns. These attackers do not fear, even if security personnel are within quick-response distances. There are access roads that lack the infrastructure to secure communities. Security lights remain unserviceable for a long time.
As a security expert, it should be a piece of cake for you. This is a call for your attention to this matter. Communities must live with no risk of gang attacks and should go about their business unhindered. We are already facing various challenges, and so such continued minor security issues should not be a part of these challenges. We have to live with zero cases of criminal attacks. We should all feel safe.
Therefore, in the next five years, look into this matter and make sure that three things are addressed.
One, encourage more schemes that will employ the young inhabitants of city slums to give them a livelihood. Then, try to get to the source of the drug business and stop it.
Manual policing is not efficient. Police personnel should be facilitated with the surveillance technology to ensure security. Therefore, three, improve the twenty-four-hour surveillance with better equipment. We cannot delegate security responsibilities to communities. It is for security personnel because some of these gangs possess arms.