{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Insecurity in numbers? This is K’la, it all depends on resale value - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Insecurity-in-number-street-and-house-naming/-/434750/2710758/-/7eg8pi/-/index.html

Insecurity in numbers? This is K'la, it all depends on resale value

So, finally, street names and house numbers are becoming a reality in my town. The Kampala Capital City Authority kicked off the project last week, using standardised engraved plates to give numbers to houses, something most Kampala residents had never seen.

Thus an era has come to an end. For as long as most of us remember, we have been giving directions to our homes in the city suburbs by using such landmarks as rubbish heaps and trees. This was easy and worked well for a long time because the former kings (now called traditional leaders) had caused the planting of hardwood trees along the main routes.

So the starting point in many cases is a mvule tree at a bus stage. At the mvule tree, people alight and take a feeder road. Many of these roads were not on the old city plan and so never got an official name.

Kampala being a place of hills and swamps, such roads either slope up or down. So you simply tell the driver/ conductor to drop you at "the ascending one" or "the descending one".

At such T-junctions these days you usually find a boda boda stage with several young men sitting on stationary motorbikes waiting for passengers.

You ask them where the next rubbish dump is, for your host said to walk, or drive along the dirt road until you find "the rubbish heap with kids playing nearby" after which you take the next turn right, "count three gates and the fourth black one is mine."

But with KCCA getting their act together, we have fewer garbage heaps in Kampala. This means a major landmark for giving directions is no longer reliable — you could get there when the garbage truck has just taken it away! But worse still, "developers" are cutting down any tree that stands in their way, so we have feer of these standing landscape markers too.

So the new standardised signage by KCCA is obviously welcome. The house numbers — I don't like the way some people are already calling them number plates — together with the street names are coming at a time when they are most needed.

Each house owner will be required to pay Ush50,000 (about $17) for the "number plate." The good thing is that these nicely engraved plates are not exchangeable and have no value away from the house they are made for.

We are of course talking of identification value here. Otherwise if someone finds some alternative use for the material, they will be plucked off as fast as they are put up. KCCA had better check with the Uganda National Roads Authority how they are addressing the stealing of road signs.

Scrap metal dealers in Uganda do not sleep. Many people who put up metallic fences using barbed wire or chain link to guard their plots from encroachment have woken up to find their fences gone.

Blame the acute global demand for steel. I haven't examined the "number plates" yet but I hope they are made of breakable material so that any attempt to remove them renders them useless.

For now, the reception the "number plates" are receiving reminds one of the 1987 currency reform exercise when most Ugandans were seeing money coins for the first time since the post-1972 inflation, but that is another story.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com

Insecurity in numbers? This is K'la, it all depends on resale value - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Insecurity-in-number-street-and-house-naming/-/434750/2710758/-/7eg8pi/-/index.html

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