Mbale City Taxi Park: A symbol of lost hope

Mbale Taxi Park, once lauded as one of the best-planned parks in East Africa by European physical planners, has now become a symbol of lost hope. The current state of the park highlights the numerous obstacles facing development projects in Mbale City.

Located in the middle of the city overlooking Wanale Hill, the park has been abandoned by many taxi drivers plying different routes due to inadequate space and poor drainage system.  Developers have erected buildings within and around the park, obstructing the normal flow of taxi operations.

“This is no longer a taxi park. It’s a market. That’s why most of the taxis quit and now operate from the roadsides. Everything is messed up,” Mr Juma Wamboya, a taxi driver, said during an interview with Daily Monitor on Saturday.

When our reporter visited the park, he found that vendors occupied the remaining empty spaces, further complicating transport operations.

Mr Wamboya blamed the problem on poor physical planning, exacerbated by corruption and incompetence.

Mr Siragi Masagazi, the spokesperson for Mbale Taxi Drivers, Owners and Conductors Association, said the developers claim spaces in front of their buildings and rent  them out to mobile money operators and other vendors.

“The owners of those shops are the ones who have brought confusion in the taxi park and have narrowed the park, pushing most drivers to operate alongside the streets,” Mr Masagazi said.

He  said efforts to issue warning letters to vendors have been ineffective due to a lack of support from Mbale City Council.

The original Mbale plan, adopted in 1969, envisioned the city as an administrative centre with designated areas for various structures, including the taxi park.

Mr John Mafabi, a resident of Namakwekwe Ward in Northern City Division, asked leaders to intervene.

“The physical plan had structures like taxi park, airport, children parks and rugby fields, but some of those spaces have been parceled out and sold to developers,” Mr Mafabi said.

Mbale, which was upgraded to city status in 2021, is referred to as a ‘sitting room of Bugisu Sub-region’ that constitute six districts.

Mbale, upgraded to city status in 2021, was once referred to as the “Jewel of East Africa” by the late President Apollo Milton Obote and was known for its well-designed roads and streets. 

Mr Hakim Watenyeri, a senior citizen in Mbale City, said Mbale Taxi Park was well-planned but it was messed up by technocrats. “The situation in the park was spoiled by corrupt technocrats, who overpowered politicians and gave out land unlawfully to developers to erect buildings in the park,” he said.

He said the taxi and bus parks used to bring in about Shs1 billion annually. Other revenue sources in the city include hotels, properties, street parking, markets, and abattoirs, among others.

“There is no way they can collect revenue when the taxis that go to Kampala, now operate on Pallisa Road, those that go to Tororo, load passengers on Tororo Road and to Teso, taxis park on Kumi Road. This is a total mess,” Mr Watenyeri said.

He added that poor management of revenue bases are partly to blame for low revenue collections.

According to the figures obtained from the city council in the Financial Year 2020/ 2021,  the city collected Shs1 billion out of the projected Shs3 billion and in 2021/2022, they collected Shs1.5b out of the projected Shs3.7 billion from Mbale City.

In the Financial Year 2022/2023, they collected  Shs1.8 billion out of Shs4.9 billion projected and in the FY2023/2024, they collected Shs1.7b out of Shs6.3 billion.

The city mayor, Mr Cassimu Namugali, during an interview with Daily Monitor said  they were developing a master plan for the city  but they are constrained by lack of funds.

“There is need to review the physical plan to match the standards of the city from one of the municipalities,” he said.

Mr James Kutosi, the Mbale City Public Relations Officer, acknowledged the poor state of the park and indicated plans to evict vendors.

“We are just waiting for the budget in the new financial year to do the enforcement. There is a whole programme on trade order, including transport business in the city and I hope to bring everything in the city,” Mr Kutosi said.

He said the taxi park used to be one of the biggest tax generating sectors in the city until presidential directive halted collections in 2018.

“The transport industry was one of the sectors giving council a lot of money, by the time that directive was issued, Mbale Municipal Council was getting Shs87 million monthly from the taxi  park and was getting about Shs28 million from the bus park, and following that directive, we lost over Shs1 billion annually of revenue,” Mr Kutosi said.