The Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters headed by Justice Catherine Bamugemereire will today Tuesday February 25, 2019 hand over its probe report to President Yoweri Museveni at State House Entebbe.
The commission’s tenure came to an end last year in November after 30 months of operation.
It had been investigating the effectiveness of the law, policies and processes of land acquisition, management and registration in the country since it was set up by President Museveni on December 8, 2016.
Statistics at the Commission show that 7,799 complaints were received and 2,700 of them filed by people, who were threatened with evictions based on court orders.
They also show that 3,400 complaints were referred for mediation while 110 cases were handled through public hearings.
Over 3000 cases remain unresolved:
The Commission’s lead counsel, Ebert Byenkya, recently said about 3,000 complaints remained unresolved and will form the basis for the next course of action.
“The funding was cut and affected investigations and it was not coming in time. We also had to cut down staff. It affected our capacity to investigate land matters and in some instances investigators encountered friction with people they were investigating, which affected the turnaround of cases,” he said.
In 2018, Bamugemereire handed over an interim report to the President during a meeting held at Kawumu Presidential Demonstration Farm in Luweero District.
In the report, Justice Bamugamereire indicated that public response to the Commission had been overwhelming. By that time the commission had received 4,900 complaints and listened to 287 of these and reviewed 600.
The Commission’s interim report recommended a number of actions for government to adopt. Some of which include restructuring and amalgamating various government agencies into two bodies: Land Authority and Conservation Agency.
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