Indeed as it has always been said that Uganda is land of wonders, there still more things happening in the country and will leave you wondering how some people were natured due to the intense levels of greed and in-sensitiveness.
Shocking News reaching our desk indicates how a famous Indian Millionaire Reddy K. Venkateshwar is in the final stages of backfilling a wetland without government knowledge.
The land titles in the names of Sumadhura were listed for cancelation over two years ago because they are located in a gazetted wetland which serves as one of the main inlets of Lake Victoria.
For a number weeks, Reddy is busy illegally backfilling the wetland contrary to the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) laws. Reddy does not have a NEMA clearance to undertake any activities and its on this matter that lorries of murram are always seen at awkward times to dump murram into the wetland that has continued to flood whenever it rains putting the lives stake.
Our sources have informed us of his plans to construct a factory with lots of waste, that would be very expensive to properly dispose and therefore, he can only discharge that waste into Lake Victoria where he claims to be having some titles in an international water body.
We have learnt that some environmental activists have brought this matter to the attention of NEMA with hopes of salvaging Lake Victoria which is a source of livelihood for many people.
This move comes following president Museveni’s continued strong statements about investors building factories in wetlands as being enemies of Mother Nature.
Besides having huge appetite for encroaching on wetlands, Sumadhura is also battling a court case of plotting to forcefully grab a multimillion investment belonging to local investor Eng.Elijah Kisembo.
Back Ground
Eng. Elijah Kisembo, a retired Marine Engineer that has a wealth of experience across the globe. He returned home in 2006 and embarked on a private practice journey. With his skills and exposure, one of the first projects was to provide expertise to the marine transport services unit during the CHOGM.
On realizing the gap in the marine transport sub-sector, he approached some industry stakeholders that trusted him and he was allocated land for development of a marine institute in Port-Bell Luzira. Operating under his company called Kisenya Holdings Ltd, he was granted 8 acres of land to develop Uganda’s fist marine institute in 2008.
His dream is on, but being frustrated buy a certain investor called Reddy K. Venkateshwar of Sumadhura Technologies Ltd. Eng. Kisembo’s troubles started a while back when he got into an arrangement with Mr. Reddy for joint development of the institute. The transaction type changed and was now a sale of part of the land between 2014 and 2015. He needed this money for development of the land, and unfortunately Mr, Reddy ended up stealing and extra one acre of land. Reddy claimed that the additional land was taken up to create a public road which is untrue.
Negotiations have been on-going to resolve the matter and in December 2020, the two parties agreed to conduct a fresh survey of the land. To Eng. Kisembo’s surprise, Mr. Reddy started backfilling the land that is under dispute, taking advantage of the financially weak retired Engineer.
We have since tried to know more about this investor and several negative reports have pooped up and we shall up publishing them in our subsequent articles.
The occurrence of this saga comes at the time when the President has for reechoed his voice against land grabbers putting locals lives and businesses at stake.
