The Katabi Town Council Mayor, in Wakiso District Mr Franco Kajura Bwakya, was on Saturday forced to chase after traders out of Abayita Ababiri market and surrounding areas to participate in the National Cleaning day exercise following a disappointing turn up for the second edition of the exercise.
“Cleaning your environment is very key, that’s why government put this initiative in place but its disappointing, that we who have come to clean Abayita Ababiri aren’t residents, the residents of Abaita don’t want to clean but we will not allow that” he said.
He added, “It’s mandatory to clean, no one is going to clean your workplace, it’s like people have failed to understand it. I can even request the prime minister to extend the cleaning day until 1 pm to see if these shop owners won’t come out to clean and work”.
He noted that the council will carry out all possible efforts to ensure the cleaning exercise is embraced by residents.
“We are not going to allow people to skip cleaning yet they put in place a national cleaning day. We also have service providers like Home Klin on board which will collect the rubbish from all the areas, to the dumping site, we are going to begin enforcement whereby you show us a payment receipt for them to take your rubbish” he said.
Mr Muhwezi Joram, the manager HomeKlin called for more sensitisation of the residents on the benefits of the monthly cleaning exercise, to ensure a larger turn up in future cleaning days.
“You find that a number of area residents are currently sleeping, since they don’t take the cleaning as an important activity, but I call upon government to put in place sensitisation, if people refuse, then you enforce, since the exercise helps us curb on a number of health issues” he said.
The residents where later on joined by Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers to clean areas of Abayita Ababiri and Kabale zone.
At Nkumba traffic lights, vehicles which were not part of the essential travelers cleared to travel were stopped from proceeding further until the exercise stopped at 10am.
