By Peter Abanabasazi
Kikuube district officials were on Thursday grilled by the Kikuube resident district commissioner Amlan Tumusiime over the delayed payment of local communities who had offered services to the district.
This was after a group of 160 local communities who were contracted by Kikuube district environmental department to open the boundaries and restore the depleted Kaziradindo wetland in Kiziranfumbi town council stormed the office of the RDC seeking his intervention over non payment of their monies.
The locals were contracted under Water Watershed Project which is one of Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP) components funded by World Bank. Water Watershed Project is aimed at addressing the social economic and environmental impacts of protracted refugee presence in the host communities and refugee settlements.
When the locals pitched camp at the RDC’s office, Tumusiime had no any other option but led the angry residents to the office of the Kikuube district Chief Administrate Officer Dorothy Ajwang, to inquire why the district had failed to pay the peasants.
Harriet Tuhaise, the secretary of Kaziradindo wetland restoration and demarcation group says that they signed a contract with the district to open the boundary and plant pillars at the wetland in July 2021.
She says they are demanding the district Sh8 .8million adding that their group has 160 members and each member was supposed to get Sh5,500 per day for ten days.
The Kikuube CAO Dorothy Ajwang immediately summoned Samuel Mugazi, the Kikuube district focal person for DRDIP to explain why the locals were not paid but Mugazi referred the matter to the water watershed project focal person Gertrude Nsita.
Nsita explained that they had failed to pay the locals because they had not completed the project.
Overwhelmed with unsatisfying explanations from the district officers, Ajwang apologized for the delayed payment and ordered the officers to process the payment for the locals.
