NO MONEY: Bamugemereire Land Probe Commission Suspends Work Over Lack of Funds

The Land Probe Commission led by Justice Catherine Bamugemereire has announced that it will suspend its operations at the weekend due to lack of money.

Appointed last December to investigate the land law, processes of land acquisition, management and land registration, the commission is expected to submit its first report next month.

Bamugemereire told reporters on Thursday: “The commission will go on a technical break [starting Sunday] until the funds are provided to enable the resumption of our work. We shall notify the public on when we shall resume.”

“For the commission to run, we pay for witnesses’ food, transport, look after them and a lot more activities that happen behind the scenes. We can’t continue hearings when we can’t send out summons because we literally send people to the villages to deliver summons which is costly.”

She also revealed that the commission was unable to send officers in different regions due to financial constraints.

“We send out investigators to every part of districts that we have been to. And all this is done using commission fuel and commission money. Ideally, if we had funds, we would have officers in each region but we can’t do that right now.”

It is for this reason that Bamugemereire said they will now resort to a desktop mode of work that won’t attract costly expenditure.

But Bamugemereire was hopeful that the money would be availed by the last week of July.

“I hope that funds will be availed by the third week of July. We have correspondences with the Ministry of Lands and Ministry of Finance explaining why the commission needs funds,” she added.

WORK SO FAR

  • Testimonies of 150 witnesses heard
  • 1,500 land related complaints received from public

Marion Ayebazibwe