The Minister for Kampala Metropolitan Affairs Minssa Kabanda has with banned all SACCOs, Co-operatives and any other forms of saving organizations operating in the KCCA controlled markets.
While addressing the media in a press conference held at Uganda Media Centre, Kabanda cited sabotage by the leaders of the SACCOs and Co-operatives on the worker of KCCA market Masters and Administrators as well as charging illegal market fees.
She gave the leaders of such vendors’ organization only two weeks to vacate the premises from where they have been running their activities to give space for KCCA market managers to operate from.
“ We want the owners of SACCOs and Cooperatives to vacate market premises and operate their businesses outside the market because they have been sabotaging the work the Market Masters and Administrators.’’ Kabanda said.
Meanwhile she also gave a list of 36 Market Masters and Administrators for the 16 KCCA markets and the City Abattoir and of these 9 are for St. Balikuddembe (OWINO) Market and one for eact of the other markets. These where recruited by the ministry of Public service and they are holding a minimum qualification of Diploma.
Dan Muhwezi who manage one of the SACCOs in St. Balikuddembe Market said that what the minister did was was outside the law that governs the SACCOS and Cooperatives.
“ When we were registering with the registrar of Cooperative we were not restricted from the locality of operation. Let the Minister cite any law that bars us from operating our SACCOs with the market premise.’’ Muhwezi challenged.
He also said that the minister could be having some other issues, may be deals other that sabotage the reason she gave.
By George Bukenya