Sanga Town, Kiruhura — Hon. Balaam Barugahara was on his way to Lyantonde this morning when he made a stop at Sanga Town. What he found there stopped him in his tracks and sparked one of the strongest warnings of his anti-corruption tour.
Hon. Balaam inspected a road in Sanga Town that had just been worked on.
The road had been graded and shaped, but there was no drainage system to carry water away. No culverts. No side drains. No protection for the road when it rains.
Residents told him that the heavy rain wash the road away slowly and the money spent on it will go down the drain with it.
Hon. Balaam told the crowd that this is how corruption works in Uganda not always by stealing cash in an office, but by doing shoddy work on the ground, cutting corners, and pocketing the money meant for quality work.
“A road without drainage is not a road,” he said. “It is a trap. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money. The people of Sanga deserve a proper road, not a road that will disappear after one rain.”
He ordered that the road works be investigated, and that those responsible for the shoddy work must answer.
Then Hon. Balaam went to Sanga Playground.
What he found there was even worse.
The playground government land meant for the children of Sanga to play, for the youth to train, for the community to gather for sports, celebrations and public events had been marked into plots. And some of those plots had already been sold.
Government land, sold as if it belonged to an individual.
Hon. Balaam stood in the middle of the playground, surrounded by shocked residents, and delivered a clear and firm message:
“All the titles made have to be cancelled and the playground returned. No one is supposed to sell government land, it’s illegal.”
He told residents that a playground is not for sale. A school is not for sale. A hospital is not for sale. A road reserve is not for sale. Government land belongs to all Ugandans — present and future — and no chairman, no land dealer, no official, no rich man has the right to sell it.
He warned that anyone who bought a plot on the playground had bought air because that sale was illegal from the start, and the titles created on that land must be cancelled.
Hon. Balaam told the residents of Sanga that this is exactly why his team is moving across the country: to stop the quiet theft of public property.
He said corruption is not only in Kampala. It is in towns like Sanga, where a road is built without drainage, where a playground is divided and sold in darkness, where a few people get rich while the children have nowhere to play.
He ordered that the playground be returned to the community immediately, that all illegal titles be cancelled, and that those who participated in the grabbing and selling of the playground be investigated and brought to book.
He also urged residents to be vigilant to report anyone who tries to sell government land, to protect public land, and to never accept that public property can be turned into private property.
