The innovations KCCA needs to finance the redevelopment of the city from its own resources
On April 19, Kampala City Council
Authority (KCCA) held a public dialogue on their plans to improve our
city. I was honoured to be the main speaker even though my knowledge of
city planning, administration and management is scanty. But like every
observant person living in a city and suffering from, but enjoying, many
of its problems and opportunities, there is an experience I could talk
about.
Up until 1967, Kampala used to
constitute the current Central Business District (CBD), old Kampala,
Kololo, Nakasero, Bugolobi and Port Bell. These areas were planned. When
kingdoms were abolished in 1967, areas that had been under Mengo
(Rubaga, Kawempe, Nakawa and Makindye) divisions were transferred to
become part of the city. These areas had not yet been planned. In 1968,
government produced the Kampala Redevelopment Master Plan integrating
these areas into the plan of the city. It was supposed to be implemented
alongside the Third Five Year Development Plan whose commencement date
was 1971. Sadly, that year Idi Amin took power and the implementation of
the plan died.
Amin’s take over set in motion a process
of internal institutional deterioration in Uganda, initially slow but
gaining pace in the late seventies to early eighties and gaining full
momentum in the 1990s till today. Increasingly, developers would put up
buildings without following city rules or would bribe city officials to
twist the rules in their favour. Thus, road reserves in suburbs were
ignored. Areas previously planned for drainage were disregarded and
developed. Public parks were sold to developers. Many buildings in the
CBD were built without parking. As the city has grown, so has been the
pressure on its infrastructure – which has remained unchanged. For
example, today, many residential houses have turned into office premises
and thereby generating high traffic in areas originally meant for low
traffic.
Consequently, Kampala has been growing
haphazardly, turning many areas like Makindye, Mutungo, Bukoto, Ntinda,
Naguru, Muyenga and Buziga into rich people’s slums. It has also allowed
people to build in wetlands (often blocking drainage systems) and in
road reserves (hence narrow streets). But this also means that Kampala’s
dysfunctions are backed by a large army of people with a vested
interest in their perpetuation – rich and poor. Vendors with kiosks and
stalls are as determined as the rich (with buildings) to stay in road
reserves and wetlands; hawkers don’t want to quit the streets, boda
bodas don’t want to leave the CBD and bureaucrats who steal money meant
for garbage collection in the city want to hold onto their privileges
too. These are the militants who will resist reform.
For KCCA to overcome these problems, it
needs to develop a new master plan for the city and mobilise revenues to
finance it. Developing a master plan is easy. KCCA can hire the best
consultants to write such plan. The challenge will be how to implement
it within the context of our highly polarised, sometimes mindless
politics. To implement a master-plan will need revenues. There is a
mentality in Uganda that for every fiscal shortage we must go to someone
else – the government or the donors. Yet KCCA can mobilise US$ 1billion
if they invested heavily in building capacity for its mobilisation.
However, to generate such revenues will demand ruffling many feathers.
And that is where politics rears its ugly head.
The major source of revenues for most
cities is property rates, trading licenses, parking fees, leases on
land, market dues, charges on bill boards etc. KCCA’s Executive
Director, Jennifer Musisi, will need to convince President Yoweri
Museveni to withdraw the directive that property rates should not be
paid on owner-occupied houses. This directive has allowed people to
claim to be living in houses they are actually renting. It is very
difficult to establish whether someone is living in their own house or
not because they can collude with their tenants.
The essence of property rates is to
allow the city administration to provide public services to
neighbourhoods. These services are provided to everyone regardless of
whether they live in their own house or they rent it. Secondly, to
effectively collect property rates, KCCA needs to map every street and
every plot and give it a name and a number. This allows them to develop a
database of all houses in the city from which to collect property
rates. To do this well, it also needs to work with the Land Registry and
Uganda Revenue Authority to establish the owners of the different
houses.
KCCA also needs to rigorously insist on
the registration of every business in the city: taxis, boda bodas,
barber shops, supermarkets, kiosks, salons, garages, shops, restaurants,
law firms, consultancies etc. This will generate revenues in form of
trading licenses. Today, I suspect (arbitrarily) over 80 percent of all
those who do business in Kampala do not have trading licenses. KCCA also
needs to extend its parking charges beyond the CBD to the rest of the
city. It also needs to introduce a congestion tax for motor vehicles
entering the CBD. Here it will kill two birds with one stone; it will
reduce the number of vehicles congesting the city while collecting fees
from those who are willing to pay the high price to enjoy the privilege.
To implement any or all these suggestion
will displease many people. Any attempt at such reforms will create
political tensions and how to navigate them to realise success is
Musisi’s biggest challenge, a subject I will return to next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment