The Minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Judith Nabakooba, has intervened in a land dispute between the National Forestry Authority (NFA) and residents of Kiboga district . NFA says that over 10,000 people tressed on a forest reserve land in the area.
Nabakooba also urged NFA to use the right methods in trying to solve the land dispute between them and the residents.
According to the NFA sector director, Jonan Mugisha, NFA has been involved in boundary opening of forest reserves in Kiboga district where they found that some residents had encroached on .
The Deputy Resident District Commissioner (RDC), Lutwama Mathias said ,“NFA conducted a land survey in 2007 to help them establish the land boundaries of the entity’s forest reserves and about 10,000 people were evicted from the land. Most likely NFA didn’t keep their records and are now coming back to haunt the residents which I think is unfair.
These people need to be heard. They have nowhere to go,” he said while addressing residents who had convened at the district headquarters during the Minister’s visit.
The Kiboga sub-county LC III Chairperson- Ssenteza expressed concern over what he called unfair treatment of residents who have been on the land for more than two decades. “The residents have been on this land for years. We have done our best to respect the boundaries of forest reserves. But NFA shocked us when they said our people had encroached on their land. We thought they had established the boundaries in the earlier survey,” he said
