The street named after former Busoga Kingdom Queen, Alice Mulooki in the center of Jinja city is now a garbage dumping site and impassable.
This is the very street leading to the Jinja central market, taxi park and the bus park but reaching the point adjacent to the market you find a heap of garbage in the middle of the street.
The failure to manage garbage in Busoga’s main town has left dwellers wondering what their leaders are doing as the leaders also ask themselves why a responsible citizens could dump garbage in the road.
The City Development Forum (CDF), advocating for a transformative and sustainable Jinja city has called for collective efforts of ensuring a shining and attractive town for development.
The forum constitutes of several stakeholder categories including the business fraternity, boda-boda, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), Media, hotel operators, garbage collectors, local security providers and others.
It is aimed at bridging the gap between the city council and the city dwellers, assisting in revenue mobilization, community sensitization about various programs undertaken by the city.
CDF also monitors projects implemented by the city authorities, identification and prioritizing of developmental projects among others.
Established in 2010 as a municipal development forum under the Decentralization Policy Framework and the Local Government Act, CDF is in all the cities and municipalities of Uganda, bringing various stakeholders together to deliberate on issues pertaining to the city.
During the general annual meeting convened at Jinja city hall on Tuesday, Mr David Kigenyi Naluwairo, the president of CDF explained that it is collective efforts of political figures, business persons, community members and other stakeholders to strategize for development of cities and other urban areas.
“All people need to participate in the planning for the city not only council authorities. Every sector has enough challenges that would be addressed by the city administration,” stated Mr Naluwairo.
Naluwairo says CDF has led to the implementation of several projects in Jinja, citing the recent trade order that created sanity in the city as vendors had stormed streets to transact trade.
The initiative that was initially opposed by various individuals especially politicians, sent back street vendors to the markets, which the president describes as an achievement.
Mr Naluwairo is concerned with the growing garbage hitting up Jinja, attributing to the new comers in town who are not knowledgeable on the city standards.
He advocated for more funds for the construction of roads as the Uganda’s second largest city is still being given money as a municipal status.
“We should not blame politicians but our government. The money from central government depends on the local revenue of an area but Jinja is lessly funded yet the local tax collected in high,” he added.
Edward Lwanga, the Jinja City Clerk commended CDF for its vision of ensuring a developed and shining city, urging members to discuss matters of the a common resident instead of involving in political disputes.
He asked the voluntary body to continue gathering distressing concerns of people, saying the manageable shall be addressed while the huge issues will be forwarded to concerned persons.
“Let us protect the infrastructure we so far have in town. We don’t need to destroying them and cry afterwards,” said Lwanga.
Muhammad Mulondo, a trader in Jinja central market, said the Market Act has undermined the associations of markets, calling for sensitizations of vendors to properly carryout works under the law.
Mulondo asked for provision of stall allocation letters to traders as many are taken to court on accusations of not having legal ownership of stalls.
