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Bududa: 10 more villages at risk of mudslide disaster

Countries
Uganda
Sources
Monitor
Publication date
Origin
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Bududa. Households in 10 more villages and acres of crops in Bududa District are at risk of being swept away by mudslides that has already killed scores of people and buried at least 100 homes. “The situation is tense and several more villages are at risk of being swept away by the mudslides. People need to be relocated to safer areas, the situation now is terrible,” the Bududa District chairman, Mr Wilson Watira, told journalists yesterday.

He warned that a visible crack measuring 40km now threatens thousands of lives and called for urgent intervention by government agencies.

He said villages on the path of the impending disaster include Bumayemba East, Bumayoka, Bumalaka, Nabusatsi, and Bulucheke.

Mr Watira said the Bududa District leadership has been in a frantic attempted to communicate to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) over the pending disaster, but there was no urgent signs or response.

Mr Martin Owor, the commissioner for disaster in the OPM, said people have to be relocated to safer areas to avoid the reoccurrence of the disastrous 2010 mudslides in Nametsi in Bududa District.
But Mr Watira said: “The only advice given to the district by the OPM was to ask the people living in the disaster-prone areas to relocate to safer areas, but with no supportive items such as food and shelter, yet the district could not relocate these people without assessing their wellbeing.” He also said several gardens of crops have been destroyed, implying that hunger will befall several communities.

“The district has reached a level of praying to God, but not OPM because mudslides occur in minutes and not months. If government feels that these people [Bududa] are part of this country, then they should respond with good heart and timely,” Mr Watira said.

In 2010, devastating mudslides struck Bududa District, leaving more than 350 people dead and hundreds more displaced.

The government then swung into action and relocated survivors to a resettlement camp in Kiryandongo District in mid-western Uganda.