Special Presidential Advisor to President Museveni, Justine Nameere has sprinkled fear in Masaka City with his emphatic demonstration of the power from President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, leaving the majority of fellow bosses grinning in anguish.
The situation emanates from the ongoing radical changes sweeping across the city, majorly Nyendo Mukungwe City Division spearheaded by new City Division Clerk, Mr Luboyera Majerani.
Majerani, who has continued to receive rave reviews from sections of the City for his top notch revenue mobilisation approaches has bruised Nameere after his insistence on implementing the City Executive Order on the restoration of trade order which has seen hundreds of street vendors moved from the streets.
Majerani has led the operations which were cleared by his senior City Clerk, Daniel Kaweesi, through confiscation of the merchandise, arrests and detentions, causing an uproar among the street vendors and a section of the public.
In the middle of the debate on the implementation of Trade order, Nameere is noted to have led a group of angry Youths to storm the office of the Resident City Commissioner ( RCC) who had called a crisis meeting to address the situation.
Like a real planned Muzzukulu as she reffres to herself, Nameere stormed the meeting, reducing her colleagues to mere trash, very much to the indignation of the top Museveni cogs in the meeting. Deputy RCCs, Assistant RCCs, Regional Internal Security Officer( RISO), Regional Police Commander (RPC) Masaka City Internal Security Officer( CISO), City Town Clerk and his three Deputies are, among others, some of the top officials besieged in a security meeting by the Special Advisor.
It ought to be noted that Masaka City has a total of nine City Commissioners led by the RCC, Ahamada Washaki, all of whom, like Nameere, are appointed by the President and work under the Office of the President. The office of the ISO is also directly supervised by the Office of the President.
As the storm tries to settle from the Nameere aggression against the city top bosses that failed to deter the actions, she has since sent a strongly worded warning to the Town Clerk to back off street traders or face the wrath of the people of Masaka, whose backbone, she notes is street vending.
” Masaka is a purely an agricultural City emanating from an agricultural region. Therefore it is very typical to have vendors selling mangoes, sugar cane, pineapples, watermelon,and maize( raw or roasted or boiled. Some of these vendors are generational vendors occupying spots that were once occupied by their parents or grand parents. Even when there are infrastructural upgrades, some still return to the same spots.” Nameere pointed out, giving cause for the continuation of trade along the streets.
” Interestingly, Nameere claims that there is no iota of truth in the reasoning that enforcement of the trade order is to benefit the city since, according to her, all the most successful business people in the city began as street vendors and hawkers.
” Therefore, these street vendors or those selling items on corners of different roads actually see this as a starting point from where they can go on to better lives or bigger opportunities.” She adds.
Separately, Mr Majerani has been applauded for improving income generation in the Nyendo Mukungwe- division, overseeing the jump in revenue collection from just Shillings 600 million last year to almost one billion in just over two months since his transfer to Masaka from Mukono.
