Mbarara district local government-DLG authorities have been tasked to apply all approaches and recover rent arrears of over Ugx100 million currently defaulted by different tenants.
The defaulting tenants include Uganda Management Institute-UMI, Makerere University Business School-MUBS Kamukuzi Mbarara and King of Kings Church.
According to Joseph Arinaitwe who is the District Finance Committee chairman, King of Kings church alone owes the district about 100 million as rent arrears for many years. The senior pastor Bishop Silas Tayebwa has been summoned by this committee to explain.
This matter was brought on the floor of council by committee seeking recommendation but councilors castigated the committee for not doing its job since this can be handled without engaging the council.
“We have tried to summon these people including King of Kings Church, UMI and MUBS bosses but they don’t respond to our request and our demands. We have the mandate as the finance committee to summon every district tenant especially those that have defaulted to come and explain why they don’t pay rent but these ones are stubborn. We shall take legal process”, Arinaitwe explained.
Bishop Silas on September 23,2022 asked local leaders including Members of Parliament to remind President Museveni that he promised to donate this land in 2016, all processes have been followed but King of Kings Church still pays Ugx1 million as monthly rent. He says he doesn’t know the claimed 100 million arrears – but only knows Ugx26 million for 2 years and the delay in payment has been caused by COVID-19 situation.
“I applied as a tenant who has been on the district land for the last 14 years and council sat around 2018 and accepted to lease us this land and it was monitored I also received the minute, actually I was expecting them to reply to me saying that this is what you are supposed to pay for the lease but not rent. Because this is the same council that had accepted to give us the lease, they even gave it a minute, I even have here the same minute which they made. We have been faithful for all those years while waiting for our lease. Therefore, let the district tell us which is which because we have no any information from them”, Bishop Silas added.
The district has now threatened to take legal action against defaulters as of today Tuesday,October 4,2022.
