MBALE CITY – The Minister of Local Government, Hon. Balaam Barugahara Ateenyi, has convened a heated meeting with vendors at Mbale Central Market to address a long-running impasse between traders and Mbale City authorities.
The minister is in Mbale City to solve the impasse between traders of Mbale Central Market and city authorities. While the official agenda was listed as resolving tax disputes, vendors turned the meeting into a platform to air deeper grievances about harassment, evictions, and betrayal over lock-up allocations
Tempers flared as vendors pointed fingers at the Town Clerk in charge of Industrial City Division, Mr. Geoffrey Mugisha, accusing him of high-handed enforcement.
Traders say Mugisha routinely harasses them, confiscates goods, and throws their merchandise out of the market during enforcement operations. Several women vendors broke down as they narrated how their tomatoes, second-hand clothes and foodstuffs were thrown onto the streets without warning.
Mr. Mugisha has previously defended the operations as necessary to restore trade order. He has argued that the council had issued several warnings before enforcement and that the market still has over 1,000 vacant stalls capable of accommodating displaced vendors.
Vendors, however, dispute this claim, saying the so-called vacant stalls are either locked by absentee rich landlords or priced out of reach for ordinary traders.
The most emotional issue raised was the allocation of lock-ups after the reconstruction of Mbale Central Market under the Markets and Agricultural Trade Improvement Programme (MATIP-1).
Before construction, owners of the old lock-ups and stalls were promised that they would be given first priority once the new modern market was commissioned. Vendors say that promise was broken.
“They told us, as original landlords, we would be considered first. But when the market was commissioned, many of us were left out. Our lock-ups were given to rich people who never sold in this market before,” one vendor told Hon. Balaam.
Similar complaints have dogged the market since its commissioning. Past investigations found vendors accusing city authorities of diverting revenue and allocating lock-ups to non-vendors, while the facility struggled with basic services like water.
