KCCA vomits millions to get body cameras
Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has acquired dozens of body cameras for its law enforcement officers on duty.
The cameras valued at an unspecified amount of money will be used by law enforcement officers deployed to carry out eviction operations in the field.
The Executive Director KCCA, Dorothy Kisaka, said they have procured these cameras to help in monitoring the officers while on duty.
She explained that this development followed several complaints from the public, accusing enforcement officers of flogging them, taking bribes and illegally confiscating their properties.
Kisaka noted that KCCA has since embarked on training its officers on handling operations and fitness.
KCCA vomits millions to get body cameras
“This is something that they have already acquired and gone through training with them. We want to get information from the field in time. So that if there is an issue, it can be dealt with immediately. The problem of reporting late is we fail to resolve an issue quickly,” she said.
The Authority is also working on penalties for officers found operating outside the law. Kisaka said guilty officers would be subjected to penalties like expulsion and suspension.
Additionally, KCCA ground operations have addressed the decongestion of streets in downtown Kampala under the Smart City strategy by relocating vendors to the markets.
The Smart City campaign is still ongoing and being rolled out to the other divisions to ensure they have law and order on the streets and that vendors are not selling their merchandise on every veranda.
Meanwhile, the Kampala City Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago stated that the body camera system is too sophisticated and high tech.
“The idea was given to us by the ED (Kisaka), we had to interrogate it further and see how it will work out because the system sounds sophisticated and alien and hightech,” he said.
He, however, added that the KCCA council, headed by him, is in the final stages of drafting a law to regulate the operations of KCCA law enforcement officers.
“The training mechanism has also to be provided for in the law. I have a view that we also create a training centre for the enforcement as it is with the police and military. We also need to be clear on qualifications and entrench it in the law,” Lukwago said.
In 2020, KCCA law enforcement officers were put on the spot after two female vendors claimed they were badly beaten.
“I was beaten in the head and I fainted. Yet I have pressure and Asthma,” one vendor complained.
KCCA has since embarked on training its officers on handling operations and fitness.
In 2017, a street vendor selling handkerchiefs, identified as Olivier Basemera drowned in Nakivubo water channel while fleeing KCCA law enforcement officers on duty.
