{"id":71222,"date":"2023-12-07T13:22:16","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T10:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kfm.co.ug\/?p=71222"},"modified":"2023-12-07T13:22:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T10:22:16","slug":"jinja-city-to-redevelop-3000-housing-units","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/jinja-city-to-redevelop-3000-housing-units\/","title":{"rendered":"Jinja City to redevelop 3,000 housing units"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Denis Edema<\/strong><\/p>\n

Authorities in\u00a0<\/b>Jinja City say they are going to redevelop over 3,000 housing estates in Walukuba, Jinja South East Division to meet standards.<\/p>\n

The estate is home to about 17,000 people drawn from across Uganda, with many of them employed in factories, while others are in the informal sector.<\/p>\n

However, in 2007, the then Jinja Municipal Council authorised the privatisation of the estate, where sitting tenants were given the option of buying their house plots on 49-year leases.<\/p>\n

The rationale of the privatisation was that the tenants were in a better position of renovating the houses or demolishing them and constructing new structures.<\/p>\n

Today, however, most of the plots in the estate have been sold off to the tenants, many of whom have constructed new houses, while several of the older structures still stand.<\/p>\n

Mr Bernard Mbayo, the Speaker of Jinja City Council, now says it was a \u201chuge political mistake\u201d to sell the housing units to sitting tenants, adding that because of such \u201ca radical political decision\u201d, Walukuba\/Masese\u00a0has become one of the biggest slums.<\/p>\n

Mr Mbayo says the government must come out and provide leadership and link up\u00a0the owners of those particular blocks to National Housing and Construction Company (NHCC) to build better houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs council, we want the government to link these sitting tenants to NHCC to build ground floor houses fitted with everything; then, going upwards,\u00a0we will be able to sell the top (first floor upwards) to recover what we have put in. As leadership, we are going to do what it takes to\u00a0achieve that,\u201d Mr Mbayo said in an interview on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

According to Mr Mbayo, the buildings being erected by residents \u201care not representative of the dreams of Jinja City status\u201d, adding: \u201cPeople are still digging pit latrines by the road, which Council is not going to accept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Henry Kitambula, the Jinja South Division deputy Resident City Commissioner (RCC), says Walukuba housing estate had a lot of challenges following the previous council\u2019s\u00a0leadership that passed a motion to sell houses to sitting tenants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were double allocations made\u00a0by the (allocation) committee of the Council at that time,\u201d he said, adding that over the next three years, Jinja City will be hosting the highest number of visitors because of the redevelopment of the Source of the Nile.<\/p>\n

Jinja City Council authorities last month handed\u00a0over the Source of the Nile site to Excel Construction Ltd to construct a viewing deck and the glass bridge where the River Nile starts at a cost of Shs15 billion over a 12-month period.<\/p>\n

The modern pier will include a docking place for boats, vehicle parking yard, restaurants, children playground, and shops among other amenities, which, upon completion, will attract more local and international tourists to Uganda.<\/p>\n

Eng Kenneth Kaijuka, the NHCC chief executive officer, says\u00a0if Jinja City is to attract investors, then local authorities must unconditionally acquire land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Denis Edema Authorities in\u00a0Jinja City say they are going to redevelop over 3,000 housing estates in Walukuba, Jinja South East Division to meet standards. The estate is home to about 17,000 people drawn from across Uganda, with many of them employed in factories, while others are in the informal sector. However, in 2007, the then Jinja Municipal Council authorised the privatisation of the estate, where sitting tenants were given the option of buying their house plots on 49-year leases. The rationale of the privatisation was that the tenants were in a better position of renovating the houses or demolishing them and constructing new structures. Today, however, most of the plots in the estate have been sold off to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":71223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2367,2366],"class_list":["post-71222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-housing","tag-jinja-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}