Recently, I traveled to my village in Gomba for a burial but what I saw there clearly indicated the level of impunity of Ugandans.
While on the way there, we went through Kabasuma, a swampy section of the road where we encountered a lorry truck packed right in the middle of the road.
The owners of this truck were busy loading logs of eucalyptus trees, completely unmindful of any other road users.
We kindly asked them to move their truck a little to the side so that we could pass. At first they lied to us that the driver had moved away. Our driver realized that the truck driver had left the key in the ignition; so we requested that our driver would help move the truck to the side. The driver then revealed himself, but said he was not going to move the truck. He told us to find an alternative route to go to our destination.
Finding an alternative route was almost out of the question because it was something like 10 kilometres away yet these people had just loaded only a quarter of the poles and it was clear that they still had a long way to complete loading the poles may be about five hours to complete the workload.
We argued and argued but realizing that these people were adamant, and not going to budge, we decided to walk the remaining distance which was about two kilometers away. What they were referring to as an alternative route would have taken us back a distance of about ten kilometers.
Seeing that this is a main road and a shortcut that takes you through to Mityana I was surprised to see people treating a main road built on tax payers money as though it was leading to someones house.
Such impunity though is exhibited every day by many people even treating public offices as private property.
Isnt it a high time that such people are punished for such crimes?
Shamim Batenda
Buddo
