Gulu market remains closed as leaders, vendors lock horns

Daily Monitor has established that while city authorities had planned to meet the market leadership on Monday, a section of aggrieved vendors sealed off the facility, demanding that their grievances are addressed first.
A meeting between vendors and city authorities held at the market’s parking lot the following day failed to come up with a solution.

Both parties instead resolved that a council meeting slated for today would decide the fate of the vendors.
Mr Patrick Omaya, the chairman of the Gulu Market Vendors Association, said the facility will remain closed until the matter is settled.
He accused the authorities of not consulting vendors on the rent.

“Rental fees for stalls was increased from Shs10,000 to between Shs40,000 and Shs60,000 while lockup shops moved from Shs70,000 to between Shs150,000  and Shs500,000 depending on their positions to attract customers without engaging us and people are aggrieved,” Mr Omaya said.
He said the protest sparked off after the council summoned them to sign a new tenancy agreement which was expected to begin on Monday.
“As a market management committee, we proposed that the signing should be done from here (market) where we have a huge conference hall but they declined and that created suspicion in vendors,” Mr Omaya said.

The vendors also want authorities to explain why the council has failed to remit to the facility 18 percent of the revenue collected from the market to maintain the facility.
When the market was opened in 2015, vendors in the old facility were to be prioritised during the allocation of space, according to the memorandum of understanding. 
These vendors had developed the facility before government took it over. 
However, it is said due to laxity in the municipal leadership then, many vendors were allowed to occupy more than two stalls or lockups

The council then gave the said old vendors a grace period of six years to run the stalls and lockups to recover their money while paying only half price to the council, according to the tenancy agreement.
It is understood that many vendors, who own more than two stalls and lockups, no longer operate from the market but rent out the spaces.
Ms Christine Atimango, an old vendors, said many developers have not recovered the costs .
“We are not against paying the tax but we want the tenancy agreement to be carefully examined in a way that will not deprive us, we are yet to recover our money,” she said.

However, Mr Alfred Okwonga, the city mayor, insisted that today’s council meeting will decide on way forward.
“For now, nobody can make a decision on the new tenancy agreement, this is a matter of the council, which we are yet to discuss and take position,” Mr Okwonga said.
He said the move by the city technocrats to increase rent fees was unjustifiable and illegal.
“Coronavirus is still there and traders are yet to recover from the shocks it caused to their business. That makes increasing the rates a crazy idea. The agents are giving out fake receipts and you don’t know which one is right and which one is wrong,”  Mr Okwonga said.

During the Tuesday meeting, Mr Denis Odongpiny, the Resident City Commissioner, ordered the council to suspend implementation of the new rental fees, and market authorities to reopen the market.
He said the Ministry of Local Government officials will arrive in the city next week to inspect the market and address the vendors’ concerns.

Government built the market at Shs29b under the Market Agricultural Trade Improvement Project and commissioned it in 2016 with the expected capacity to accommodate 4,000 vendors.
But records from the market indicate that a total of 1,200 vendors have since failed to return due to the negative effects of the pandemic.

Leaders blame mess on 2015 tenancy agreement

Mr Moses Otimong, the city town clerk, told Daily Monitor yesterday that the disagreements stemmed from the 2015 tenancy agreement.

“That agreement was a mess, according to information that we established. Some of them (vendors) occupied more than one lockup, others had three, five and even others had 10 meaning that the tax was being borne by people directly doing business, which was very unfortunate,” Mr Otimong said. “We are going to do a re-verification and in that process, we also agreed to halt the registration exercise and signing of tenancy agreement to help us establish who the real vendors are, and also those holding and hiring stalls and lockups to others,” he added. 

Mr Otimong said the six-year grace period expired, so they needed a new tenancy agreement. “The vendors misunderstood everything due to politics involved. We only needed to come up with a new tenancy agreement while maintaining the old rates. We did that to create order, and automate revenue collections due to leakages,” he said.

“We shall also establish who owns what; we have already deployed our structures to sort out the authenticity of the vendors,” he added.

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