One businessman, identified as Fazali, a stall owner at Mbale Central Market, has been arrested and detained at Mbale CPS during the verification exercise for the lockups and stalls to identify the real owners and prevent them from being rented out to vendors.
Mr. Mukisa Arthur, the Technical Assistant from the State House Office of the Vice President, said, "We're in Mbale central market to help the poor vendors, which the rich have taken over.
"The government built this facility to help its poor people, but those with money buy everything and became landlords, and start exploiting others." He noted.
Mukisa confirmed the arrest of one stall owner who has been masqueradering as landlord identified as Fazali and detained at Mbale CPS. It was found out that he collects UGX 5.5 million per year from a poor vulnerable vendor as her landlord but only pays 300,000 shillings to the council.
"Imagine someone has a lockup they rent out for 2,400,000 shillings for 6 months but only pay the council UGX 300,000. This is the bad system of thieves the president was talking about." Mukisa stated .
In an interview with this publication , John Jacob Ettedu, the Assistant Commissioner of the Ministry of Local Government and the National Coordinator of MATIP, said, "This is a countrywide exercise being done is all 18 government markets and a directive by President Museveni to clean up the markets and ensure that the small entrepreneurs who are in the market are the real vendors, not controlled by the rich people and government officials."
"We have information that this market has many landlords, and so far we have Reallocated over 20 Lockups to Sitting Tenants." Ettedu said.
"This is a government facility and belongs to the Mbale City Council. Therefore, any person here is either a vendor or a customer. If we find out that someone is a landlord, we remove the facility and give it to the sitting tenant." He added.
What has affected the markets are the so-called landlords. We have evidence where a vendor is paying 450,000 shillings to a landlord while only paying 50,000 shillings to the council. This is cheating the vendor," He noted.
Perez Wambedde, the Chairperson of Mbale Central Market highlighted that this operation is good but will affect them as leaders.
He believes it will cause many problems with the owners, who will think their properties have been taken, resulting in endless fights and chaos in the market.
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