The building that has been under construction as an upgrade of the Passenger shed in Kisoro New Park, central Division in Kisoro municipality has been completely demolished under the Instructions of the Kisoro Resident District commissioner.
The construction works on this shed started on Saturday afternoon before Easter Sunday but a lot of suspicions that the works are illegal were raised by concerned citizens on different social media platforms.
Municipal authorities did not come out to make clarifications over the matter. Today morning, the Kisoro municipal town clerk, Haruna Kamba together with his deputy, Nkunda Moses went with police to make arrests on the workers at construction site but they all ran away after being tipped off by one of the official at the municipality.
Speaking to voice of Muhabura,the town clerk Kamba said that the structure was illegal and his office was not aware of it. He added that he wrote to the Municipal Engineer stopping the constructions but works continued.
The Kisoro Resident district commissioner, Hajji Shafiq Ssekandi says the state anti corruption unit and IGG are partnering with the police to investigate the matter and the Kisoro town clerk together with the municipal senior engineer have made police statements and Kisoro police station.
According to the letter from the office of the RDC dated 12 April 2023, state house anti corruption unit called him at 4:30pm reporting that some citizens have already petitioned over the same construction.
He revealed that the Kisoro town clerk has expressed little knowledge about the works yet he is the custodian of government property in the municipality. He added that the district security community resolved to demolish the structure under the request of the town clerk.
The Kisoro district police commander (DPC) Musisi Robert says that investigations are ongoing but no arrests have been made. He noted that a section of Kisoro municipality authorities could be the one behind the illegal constructions.
Several leaders at Kisoro district are wondering why the town clerk wrote to the municipal engineer ordering him to stop constructions yesterday, yet the Municipal engineer was the first to write to him on Easter Sunday asking him to take actions because his department was not aware of this construction plans.
Meanwhile, Business community, customers, loaders and off loaders in New park have expressed gratitude to the Kisoro RDC saying that the shed serves different purposes and it would be a disservice to remove it.
Some municipal leaders had said that they wanted the lockups to be booking offices for some bus companies and each lock up was to be rented at five hundreds thousands per month. Other municipal leaders say that prominent business men had funded the construction.
A section of some councilors said that they wanted to get money from the lockups because they don't get salaries.
All municipal political leaders have shown no interest to comment on this matter.
