AT LEAST 23 people have been killed after a series of landslides swept through two villages in eastern Uganda.
Heavy rains triggered the landslides in the mountainous district of Bulambuli, 270km northeast of the capital, Kampala, yesterday morning, local officials and aid agencies said, leaving hundreds homeless as rescue workers scoured the scene for survivors.
"So far 15 bodies have been discovered in the village of Mabono and another eight in Meru village," said Richard Nataka, secretary general of the Ugandan Red Cross. According to Uganda's Daily Monitornewspaper, a local chief, his wife and their eight children died.
“Hundreds have been made homeless, so as well as search and rescue operations, we are trying to distribute some non-food items to those affected.”
The landslide is the latest to hit the east of the country, where experts say heavy human settlement on mountain slopes has destroyed forest cover and weakened the soil. At least seven people died in another landslide in the northeastern region of Karamoja earlier this month, while in March last year more than 300 people were killed in the Mt Elgon region, prompting calls for the government to put in place a plan to move people from the slopes.
The Ugandan government promised to relocate half a million people, but getting people to leave their land is not easy, said Arthur Makara, executive director of Uganda’s Science Foundation for Livelihoods and Development.
“The problem is that even when you try to shift people they are hesitant to move because they are so attached to their land.”
The government bought land near the capital, Kampala, to rehouse people, but in the end only several thousand people were willing to relocate, he said.
“With climate change and the instability and magnitude of rain that has followed, people living on these hillsides are at high risk from those slides. People need to plant trees and cultivate properly on mountain terraces and the government needs to put in place a proper mitigation plan so that so that not as many lives are lost every time this happens.”
Following several months of below-average rain, heavy rainfall has swept over eastern Uganda this month. Villages have been flooded while roads and bridges have been swept away.