Authorities renew move to lease public cemetery

Masaka City Council has announced plans to issue sub-leases to sitting tenants on a public cemetery land at Kamirapango on Masaka–Mbarara highway.

In 2020, residents in Bumali Zone occupying part of the cemetery petitioned the council seeking to legalise their occupancy on the land.

Mr Tony Ssempijja, the Masaka City speaker, said the council has sent the matter to the executive committee for discussion before sending it back to council for approval.

“That place [Kamirampango] used to host a cemetery and a cremation centre for the first Indians who settled in Masaka, but now it is a fully established cell in the city. That is why council is coming up with a process of allowing people settling on that land to get leases,” he said on Sunday.

Initially, it was a small group of 24 encroachers occupying about three acres of the public cemetery land but the number has since increased to more than 200 and some have already set up residential houses.

The cemetery was initially measuring 10 acres but only two and half acres are still intact.

Mr Ssempijja said if the land is sold at a price that the council is yet to determine, part of the money will be used to buy another piece of land for a public cemetery. 

Mr Joseph Walugembe, the Kasijagirwa Village chairperson, said the locals want council to come up with appropriate fees, which they will be remitting to the council as premium fees so that they can settle on the land without fears of being evicted.

“Residents have already put up several developmental projects on the cemetery land including the permanent structures, which they are not ready to lose,” he said.

He said they also plan to put up a health centre, a recreational facility and other social amenities.

However, Masaka City Mayor Florence Namayanja, said they need to establish how many people own plots in the public cemetery before council makes a final decision.

A couple of years ago, the city works’ committee had set Shs800,000 as premium fees that each sitting tenant on cemetery land had to pay.

However, this was contested by some leaders, who argued that the money was too little compared to the current market value of the land in the area.

Last year, Masaka City authorities halted the construction of a car washing bay on part of the cemetery land.

The public cemetery land is normally used to bury unclaimed bodies from Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, mainly those killed in robberies and accidents.

On average, the hospital receives four unclaimed bodies daily. Due to limited space, one pit is currently used to bury more than one body, and since they are shallow, dogs sometimes exhume the bodies.

The colonial government had put aside 10 acres of land for the municipal public cemetery but unscrupulous staff in the district have over the years been parcelling it out to individuals.

Unauthorised acquisition of plots on the cemetery land started in 2013 when a number of developers started partitioning plots and building houses.

They later reportedly exhumed more than 700 remains secretly and placed them in one mass grave to pave way for redevelopment of the land.