Anger and frustration have entangled a section of residents affected by the impending construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline-EACOP, as the project implementers move to secure land in Kyotera and Rakai districts.
These include 21 households that will be physically displaced as the government and partners undertake constructions of a 30-meter wide pipeline to transport Uganda’s crude oil from Hoima to the Chongoleani peninsular in Tanga, Tanzania.
The project will affect 760 people in the districts of Rakai and Kyotera, but some of the affected persons in the area, are dissatisfied with the valuation figures given to them during the disclosure exercise which was conducted in June by the project implementers, saying the figures are not proportional to their pieces of land and projects they had set up in there.
But Angela Nalwanga, the Head of Stakeholders Management and Social Affairs at the East African Crude Oil Pipeline-EACOP project, partly attributes the underlying frustrations to land tenure systems in which many aggrieved Project Affected Persons (PAP’s) are covered.
Kyotera District Chairperson Patrick Kintu Kisekkulo says that they have formally notified the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development about the public frustration about the project, warning that the project stands to lose the social contract, should such grievances remain unattended before actual implementation.
