Kamya De­fends Re­lo­ca­tion of Park Yard Ven­dors

The minister for Kampala, Betty Kamya  has de­fended its ac­tions to re­lo­cate over 10,000 ven­dors op­er­at­ing in Park Yard mar­ket in Kam­pala’s cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict.

In the wee hours of Mon­day morn­ing, po­lice stormed the Park yard mar­ket, de­mol­ish­ing stalls on the or­ders of Kam­pala Cap­i­tal City Au­thor­ity (KCCA) Min­is­ter, Beti Olive Kamya. This was 10 days to an ear­lier 30-day dead­line she had is­sued to the ven­dors to re­lo­cate.

Hun­dreds of ven­dors were seen on Mon­day morn­ing wail­ing and count­ing losses as Po­lice blocked some of them from ac­cess­ing their stalls to save their mer­chan­dise.

But in a state­ment is­sued at Par­lia­ment on March 1, 2017, Kamya told MPs that the mar­ket be­longs to Nakivubo War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium and was des­ig­nated as a park­ing lot for the sta­dium.

She ex­plained that the land was en­croached on by ven­dors but ef­forts to re­gain the space by the Nakivubo board to re­claim it have been fu­tile for over 20 years, with in­ter­fer­ence from some individu­als seek­ing po­lit­i­cal clout.

“This is a twenty year story of the own­ers try­ing to re­pos­sess their premises and have been hag­gling and no de­ci­sion taken. If a gov­ern­ment can hag­gle with il­le­gal ven­dors for 20 years to de­velop p one acre of land, surely what else will they do?” she ques­tioned.

The KCCA Min­is­ter also ex­plained the early morn­ing evic­tion ex­er­cise, re­veal­ing that there were plans by a group of ven­dors to block the process through a court or­der.

“I re­ceived com­mu­ni­ca­tion that the ven­dors had peace­fully agreed to re­lo­cate to Us­afi be­fore the or­ders were given.  How­ever there were ef­forts by some smart peo­ple to get a court or­der to block re­lo­ca­tion and so it was smart to do so a day be­fore,” Kamya ex­plained.

The min­is­ter re­vealed that the area de­vel­oper, Hamis Kig­gundu has of­fered 1000 stalls at his shopping mall where were of­fered in Ham shop­ping mall and of­fered to pay 700 stalls for ven­dors in Us­afi mar­ket for six months.

She said KCCA has also re­served a to­tal of 500 work spaces for ven­dors at Us­afi mar­ket, 51 in Wandegeya mar­ket while 2000 ven­dors will be ac­com­mo­dated at Ham shop­ping cen­ter.

“I am proud that we have suc­cess­fully brought to an end a 20-year old and re­lo­cated over 10,000 peo­ple with­out in­jury and tear­gas or may­hem,” she con­cluded.