Karuma dam affected communities protest illegal eviction
The 600MW Karuma HPP is located on the Nile River in Kiryandongo District in mid-northern Uganda, 110km downstream of Lake Kyoga, and 270km from Kampala the Capital of Uganda.
The government of Uganda plans to evict an unspecified number of people who have been affected by the Karuma Hydroelectric Power Station project construction in the northern part of the country.
The government’s intentions are contained in a notice published in the New Vision newspaper on July 6 2023. In the notice, government gave the affected persons 30 days to vacate the land or face forceful eviction.
While the 30 days have since elapsed and no eviction has been conducted, the affected persons continue to live in fear.
According to a report compiled by Just Finance International (JFI), the groups of the affected persons do not have access to the publication nor can they read English, the language in which the notice was published.
Residents interviewed by JFI were not aware of the notice and were not had not been contacted by any government office or from Sinohydro, the Chinese state-owned contractor for the Karuma project to notify them of the pending eviction.
“I just heard from outside when people were discussing this issue – but nobody has ever come to my home to explain anything,” an unnamed responder told JFI.
In its report, JFI quoting local civil society organizations indicated that publishing such important announcements in a newspaper is a contravention of the official resettlement process.
Proper procedures require all affected people to be contacted in person and in their local languages before any eviction can take place, it stated.
The government commenced resettlement of people affected by the project in the Karuma hydro dam area in 2014, however, according to JFI, many people have been waiting almost ten years for relocation and fair compensation for their land.
There is still an ongoing court case contesting what the communities should be compensated. Some project-affected people say that the compensation they received was insufficient for buying new equivalent land elsewhere.
The 600MW Karuma HPP is located on the Nile River in Kiryandongo District in mid-northern Uganda, 110km downstream of Lake Kyoga, and 270km from Kampala the Capital of Uganda.
