By John Ogulei
SOROTI CITY
The Dirt surrounding the allocation of plots in the newly constructed Soroti main market has taken yet another twist.
Now the Soroti City Resident Commissioner, (RCC) has exposed how corruption and double standards by the city top leadership played a key role on the misallocation of the Plots.
Soroti City authorities and the Soroti Main Market Vendors have been embroiled in a bitter row which saw vendors refusing to take up the allocation of lockups.
The vendors recently had threatened to boycott the newly constructed main market citing corruption and double standards employed by the leadership.
The vendors protested the allocation prompting the Soroti RCC, Robert Adiama Ekaju to halt the exercise of allocation of lockups.
Now in his preliminary findings that are supposed to be handed to the Ministry of Local Government Officials, RCC Adiama states that, the investigation has established how some unscrupulous individuals have allocated themselves up to five plots while others used corrupt means to find their way into the market.
Without divulging details, Adiama noted that the detailed report will be shared with the officials from the Ministry of Local Government who are expected in Soroti this Friday.
The allocation of lockups to vendors at Soroti Main Market has been marred by several irregularities according to an investigation report released by Adiama.
According to Adiama, he decided to conduct his investigations after learning that there was a massive disagreement between city authorities and market vendors, with many of them refusing to take up lockups allocated to them.
The disagreement has also affected the planned relocation of vendors from the temporal market along Serere road to the newly constructed main market.
Moses Otimong, the acting City Clerk of Soroti admits that they have put in place a complaint desk for amicable settlement.
“We have also pinned the vendors register at the new market,” Otimong said.
The 24 billion Shillings market was constructed with funding from the African Development Bank and commissioned by President Yoweri Museveni in November last year. It was expected to commence operations in March after 1,316 vendors were reported to have been vetted but the process has dragged on.
