A piece of land estimated to be 0.4hectors National Forestry Authority (NFA) claims to be their, has emerged paddle between the NFA and Mpanga Secondary School in Fort Portal. Mpanga School, which was started in the 1960s, wants to construct classroom blocks and laboratories to accommodate the increasing number of students, especially those under the Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme, in this piece of land but these plans have been frustrated by NFA claiming that the land is one of the forest reserves in Uganda meant for Uganda tours and safaris.
The headmaster of the School, Mr. Turyaguma Baramu threatened that the school will pull out of the USE programme since the existing classroom blocks cannot handle the large number of students without land for expansion. The school has 1,462 students, of which 509 are admitted under the USE programme, paying sh29,420 per term. Currently, the school has 19 classrooms on the O’Level block and five on the A’Level block. It also has two laboratories and a library that can accommodate only 200 students yet the number of students is yet to increase due to USE.
The Prime Minister, Professor Apolo Nsibambi, recently said that if NFA felt strongly about the land, they should compensate the school and give them alternative land. Nsibambi also directed that NFA should stop its evictions and gave a go-ahead for the school to construct classroom blocks on the land.
However, the headmaster alleged that when they started grading the land, Samwiri Rwabwogo, NFA’s law enforcement coordinator, led a group of armed men who beat the driver of the grader claiming that the school was advised to get an occupational permit to allow them use the forest reserve, but they did not pay attention to.
The parents’ representative, Silvester Kimara, said: “If NFA insists that the forest reserve is theirs, then the school will not admit more students under the USE programme.
The students’ leaders say it is unfortunate that the school and NFA are engaged in unnecessary conflicts. “We are perturbed that the Government institutions are fighting each other and wasting time. A year has not yet elapsed since the introduction of USE; must forest reserves be destroyed in the names of USE and its constructions? Who knows?