Africa-Press – Uganda. The High Court in Tororo has issued an interim injunction, restraining the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development and Tororo Archdiocese from cancelling 21 lease title certificates on a disputed piece of land in Busia District.
The ministry and the archdiocese have also been restrained from interfering with developments on the land in question until determination of the temporary injunction.
This comes after a section of customary land owners run to court to seek for an interim injunction following a May 23 notice issued by the commissioner land registration, Mr Johnson Bigira, asking all those currently occupying the land to return all copies of their titles to the registrar of titles for cancellation.
The commissioner in his notice also claimed that his office had received a request from the Trustees of the Archdiocese of Tororo claiming that part of its 1,208 acres of the land has been encroached by the said squatters and requested the ministry to cancel their titles.
The 1,208 acre piece of land, which the Archdiocese of Tororo also claims ownership traverses three villages of Angorom, Angololo, and Amunoit in Buteba Sub-county.
However, Ms Doreen Ajuna, the acting registrar of the High Court in Tororo issued the injunction on Tuesday after an application filed by the 21 customary land owners led by Mr John Okware Ridar.
“We are the owners of this land and asking us to vacate it amounts to fraud and we will not allow that,” Mr Okware told Daily Monitor on Tuesday.
The locals earlier accused Rev Centurio Olaboro, the Tororo Archdiocese coordinator for peace and justice, and Mr George Alfred Obore, also the chairperson of the archdiocese’s land committee, of organising a group of hooligans to interfere with the mark stones on the land.
Mr Eric Okolong, the director of Kinyara Sugar Factory Limited and one of the companies owning land in the area said if the church wanted land, it would have used the rightful channels.
“They should not use force because we have evidence of grown up eucalyptus trees that we planted along the edges of our land,” he said.
However, Mr Obore, the chairperson of the land commission in the Archdiocese of Tororo, said the church is combating many illegal immigrants on its land.
He said the church had initially alerted police about the exercise to open the boundaries of its disputed land to establish a demonstration and research centre.
“The church has already partnered with the Ministry of Agriculture and we are in the process of establishing demonstration and research centres,” he said.
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