To some of us who use the roads around the Naguru-Nakawa estate land, what welcomes you is an idle bushy rejected land, a home to lawbreakers and rodents that terrorise residents. In fact, you could even see and smell the bad odour emanating from that land. You can confirm that it is being used by unsuspecting Ugandans as a place of convenience due to its stinking nature!
Actually, it was likely to be an incumbrance on critical public health investment like Naguru China Uganda friendship hospitals because it would increase disease infections to the community.
When I saw developers like Meera investment already starting to close their space for development, I was convinced that it is now high time we are going to start to earn dividends from that resource after 10 years after empty promises of Opec -prime properties to construct a modern satellite city.
If we are to compute how much we have lost as a nation in terms of revenues and jobs in the last 10 years when the foundation stone was laid for the modern development of the estate in 2013, you will realize that it is a mind-boggling figure. some times, some purported investors take our country for granted and we, therefore, need a law to penalize such bad habits.
I think it is a common phenomenon even in our industrial parks when some investors fail to use the land given to them by Uganda Investment Authority. This heavily affects government plans and projections on job creation and economic growth.
This implies that we should carry out enough background checks to ascertain the capacity of our prospective investors. Here we have our local investors like Meera investment with a good track record of investing heavily in real estate, hospitality, education, etc hence providing jobs to Ugandans. They should often be supported at all times because we are confidently sure of them.
The allocation of land to health investors like Internal medicines of Virginia and Specialised Uganda heart institute will not only offer affordable specialized treatment to Ugandans, but it will also reduce medical tourism which looks to be one of the factors draining our limited foreign reserves.
We thank the government through the Uganda Land Commission for reclaiming back land after 10 years of redundancy.
Some of the other investors who have been demarcated some land include; Roko, Mult consults, Arab oil supplies and Exploration, Dashen Uganda, Dominion partners, Dembe enterprises, EACOM international, Fakharuddin properties, Gas logistics limited, Global paper products, Master links Uganda, Phaneero Ministries Limited Rudra hardware, Seven Hills apartments, and Wash & Will with an expected total investment of $500m.
We understand that President General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is about to give an opinion on the move of allocating the above land for appropriate management, it is therefore our humble appeal to His Excellency the President to endorse the program for the public interest.
Ben Ssebuguzi is an economist, Entrepreneur and Secretary General of Uganda poor youth movement.
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