COMMUNITY ROLE

The community role.

By 

Lubadde Rahim 2018 (recap)

Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Many have come, though indeed countless have been involuntarily set out. This should not be the lethargy of our generation. Ugandans will take little note on what we say today but they are all responsible for the partial work. All the upcoming slogans like, ‘government etuyambe’ are preliquizite for laziness and failure to coordinate our lifestyle.

It is rather for us to be here and dedicate ourselves to great tasks remaining from the honored deceased, they have all died throbbing and in agony. This is not about me or you but the continued struggle is for us as Ugandans. Like president Obama says, “Yes we can”. The mandate for urban and rural development lies in hands of neither schemers nor government but civilians are the universal stakeholders in the brawl. Whether you like it or not, am not here to lie but to express out what my heart presumes to be factual, call it the ugly truth.

Parsed and constructive it hails profound in me, the tragic, catastrophic and filth nature of the urban streets in Uganda is the pretext for the increasing ‘fabrication’ of new disease causing germs and perhaps vectors. Do we have planners? A question that many ask. Time and time again, basic errors have cropped out in the best streets and claims that Mbarara, Fortportal and Mbale are the cleanest towns in the state. Doubt though not driven directly to the assumption but miscalculations prevail.

Services offered by physical planners are not entirely discrete and personal, they are rather capabilities performed by people for the people. Whoever benefits include the communities. Every time my alarm goes am taken in tremor as anxiety engulfs my soul fathoming about driving on the ugly, dirty streets of Kampala though these days I have absolutely resorted to taking short cuts to moderate the time taken driving.

We are not speaking as students, or planners or citizens of this or that city but rather as part of the living humans whose existence is in complete doubt. We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give our environment victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent the overwhelming devastating conditions. The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in the continued mass uncoordinated development. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of the rural status rendering our land entirely urban.

Urbanization comes with a complete change of mindsets, but where has it left our communities? In complete devastated and isolated living places. The sense of belonging is dying out and our leaders are silent about it. People are killing one another only because of the lack of balance in the way of development. Our communities still need to play a great role in shaping and developing the places in which we live. A set of discipline that phased out from our ancient spirits. Public amenities are meant to support lives of all individuals in a given place including the strangers and their maintenance is a collective and social role of all people who stay there in such places.

Who cleans drainage channels? Who cleans roadsides? Who burns community rubbish? Who cleans public spaces like churches and mosques? Personalization and bragging is the main cause of poor sanitation in our societies. It is also related to modernity. Should we wait for government to rejuvenate such conditions? Is this about the physical planners?

No, it’s the drama of our mindsets. People only think of their compounds and perhaps private gardens and completely ignore what happens in places where they pass. When diseases such as cholera and Ebola come up, they start censuring the government. The day these naïve souls will discern that it’s not always about people in authority but the community inclusive, our societies will have the preeminent to harvest.

Additionally, confessions must be portrayed, why settle in wetlands, forests, and all other environmentally sensitive areas. Is this the physical planner’s role especially when flooding enhances? A case in point Bwaise, Katanga, Katwe, Ndeeba etc. Cooperate social responsibility should be the talk of every authority, the policy of status quo must stop. There is a need for a communal understanding of the prevailing mitigation measures and the precious role that individuals can play and indeed stop blaming authorities.

Many times people have constructed in road reserves, does this also need a planner to direct development in such situations, and growth should not be in our physical areas but rather in our minds.

In conclusion, a physical planner’s role is to coordinate development and basically enforce physical planning laws and regulations, but the overall implementation and monitoring of his work should be a role of us the natives of these communities. The more we sit back the more we are left behind. Uganda deserves the best because we have everything it takes to develop for example the resources inform of materials, human resource and perhaps capital that is miss-used by the corrupt ‘heads’ of our government officials.

It should be noted that there is a great link between physical planners and politics and this is the reason why they are imputed time to time for the less service delivery. But our planners also demand the finest because their risky decisions are felt directly by the citizens and any mistake done by a planner costs his people a lot.

Wake up Uganda, wake up my people, wake up planners, and wake up authorities!!

""The writer is a physical planner"'

City Planning Uganda!