By Erias Lukwago
Imperial Royale Hotel, Kampala Launch of the Kampala City Address Model (CAM) and the Computer Aided Mass Valuation System.
The CAM/CAMV System has been a well-timed addition to the administration of Kampala Capital City. As KCCA, beyond accountability, we owe the citizens of Kampala transparency and equity in the collection of taxes. With property tax, in particular, the Computer Aided Mass Valuation (CAMV) Project was designed to ensure that the tax register is updated to accurately capture the property tax obligation of each immovable property owner and to improve on the tax regime by guaranteeing accuracy and fairness in assessing the same.
To a finer detail, this valuation exercise was synchronized with the City Address Model (CAM) to have a modernized location detail of addresses pegged onto each property.From our record, over 340,000 properties in the City have been uniquely identified with house numbers and over 7500 roads assigned names, challenges notwithstanding.
This development constitutes a huge milestone towards addressing the current messy GIS system and will go a long way in improving the navigation system as envisaged in our mission and vision of building a well-planned, modern, liveable, sustainable, attractive, user friendly and functional City befitting the Pearl of Africa.
It also underlines the niche of excellence required in bringing services closer to the people of Kampala, for with the modernized navigation systems, ambulances, security, fire-fighters and rescue services that are life and time-sensitive we shall realize a reckoned efficacy.
This initiative is also a big step towards easing ability to visualize spatial relationships in the e-commerce business as the business community will be able to leverage this navigation system and derive profit initiatives through locating their clientele.
Apparently, special hire drivers or boda-boda riders who have revolutionized transportation by a click of a button, catering services and franchise owners whose amenities depend on knowing the location of their customers etc have been handed a springboard to foster their operations.
As citizens of Kampala get acclimatized with these new systems, they are also duty bound to ensure that the established infrastructure that underpins our navigation system is protected against vandalism and abuse as we strive to realize a planned, an all-inclusive, liveable, resilient and functional City. Lastly, we are optimistic that this will guide us in addressing the concerns of several property owners and the compliance challenges arising from the current unfair tax regime.
We hitherto proposed adopting a banded system to phase out of the omnibus 6% rate as property tax set by our predecessors. We also intend to waive property owners who don’t meet a certain threshold to be exempted but also, have a reasonable one for the affluent.
These processes and decisions will be arrived at in the near future. Special appreciation goes to the World Bank and ASToN (Smart Cities) and other development partners for enabling Kampala to realize these laudable initiatives towards creating sustainable and inclusive cities.
Erias Lukwago
LORD MAYOR, KAMPALA CAPITAL CITY
