News
Uganda: Landslides destroy 3 villages; toll unknown
Landslides are a common occurrence in the hilly parts of eastern Uganda, and they have been especially lethal over the years in those villages where the land is denuded of vegetation cover. In 2010 massive landslides in Bududa killed about 100 people, destroying everything from the village market to a church.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, who visited the scene, said at the time that the landslides were divine retribution for the people’s failure to give to the land what they take from it. The villages are usually heavily populated, and often they live on land bare of trees.
There has been fierce resistance to a government effort to relocate the most vulnerable people in Bududa and neighboring districts, with some activists there saying it would be even more disastrous to abandon their ancestral homes. Even those who were relocated to a camp for refugees after the 2010 landslides secretly returned to Bududa, said Mallinga, the disaster preparedness minister.
“There’s a degree of unwillingness to leave,” Mallinga said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
