adminKAMPALA. — The Ugandan government will relocate about 115,000 people in the landslide-prone eastern region, a senior official has said.
Martin Owor, commissioner relief, disaster preparedness and management, told Xinhua late on Saturday that the move is intended to stop the frequent death of people and destruction of property as a result of landslides in the Mountain Elgon region.
“We want to put everybody to safety. We need to remove all the 115,000 people but in phases. What we shall do immediately is to get the people who are at very high risk and take them to the land that is available in Bulambuli,” said Owor.
He said the Office of the Prime Minister will immediately relocate some 10,000 people who are at most risk, especially in the eastern district of Bududa, where landslides on Thursday killed over 40 people and destroyed property.
Owor said in an earlier statement issued on Saturday that government has three options in the resettlement plan that will take place over a period of 10 years. People who are at risk will be asked to move to nearby trading centres where government will buy land for resettlement. They would only be allowed to go back to their ancestral land for farming.
In the second option, Owor said government intends to establish large resettlement schemes within the Mountain Elgon region, where families at risk will be given 2.5 hectares of land free and they are expected to surrender their ancestral land to government to establish forests.
In the last option, government will support the voluntary resettlement of the families at risk to other parts of the country. They will have to surrender their ancestral land to government to plant trees.
This would not be the first time the government is resettling people who are at risk in the region. After the 2010 landslides that left about 300 people dead, government resettled the families at risk to another part of the country. However, after sometime they returned to their ancestral land claiming it was more fertile for farming. – Xinhua
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