A section of councillors within Mukono Municipality last week announced before the press a campaign of soliciting for trees to restore Namyoya central forest reserve.
They claimed that despite the Ministry of Water and Environment rejecting the proposal to degazette the forest, together with environmental agencies such National Forestry Management Authority and National Forestry Authority failed in their role to restore the forest.
Namyoya forest reserve was among the list of the 16 proposed forests to be degazetted. However, Members of Parliament requested the MoWE to make a technical report on the matter as well as listing exchange land to gazette new forests.
In its report, the Ministry said that none of the districts met the procedural and legal requirements to degazette the forest reserve.
These include approval by the local government councils at all levels, alternative land in the same ecological zone for gazetting new forest.
The forest reserve initially had 900 acres but due to encroachment over the past years, only less than 400 acres are left.
The entire forest was cleared and replaced with eucalyptus trees while other parts of the forest are used for bricklaying, wetland rice growing and construction of permanent buildings.
The insight post has however established that the remaining part of land was also partitioned and individuals own titles on it.
A section of councillors headed by Allan Mawanda, the Speaker for Mukono Central Division gave an ultimatum of 15 days to start planting trees in whichever space they come across on the forest reserve land once responsible authorities don’t take action against the developers.
Their plan however lacks a clarity on how to implement the decision without enforcement. Like earlier revealed, several spaces are under development making it easy for owners to accuse councillors for trespass.
The developed spaces have legal titles and also received clearance from the Municipal planning department. Besides, the undeveloped spaces also have titles.
The Insight Post has established from the environment offices of NFA and NEMA that councillors have never contacted their offices either informally or formally.
It is hard to dispute NEMA and NFA’s response since also the councillors cannot make any reference to the letter claimed to have been addressed to the two offices.
Could the good environmentalist (councillors) be leveraging into the scramble and partitioning of Namyoya central forest reserve. Nonetheless, on the face of it, they are presenting good ideas on stage.
The 15 days’ ultimatum aims at ending destruction of the remaining part of the forest and instead promote afforestation dissimilar to another section of leaders pushing for the development of the place.
It should be recalled that before the permanent secretary for the Ministry of Environment issued a statement discouraging parliament to approve degazette of the 16 forest, Mukono Municipal Member of Parliament Betty Nambooze and Goma Division Chairperson Humphrey Kyase spearheaded the campaign to degazzete the forest.
Among the issues they fronted included an opportunity for the municipality to acquire a section for a leisure park, cemetery ground, playground and a lagoon.
To them it was important to degazette so as to have a proper plan for the area since people claiming to plant trees where the natural forest is cleared also set up permanent houses and that by the time the government will wake up to stop them there shall be no more land for the division activities.
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