Residents of Mpungu sub-County Kanungu District are stranded over the lack of full ownership of the Seven hundred seventy acres of land commonly known as “Mbwa Tract” that was erroneously gazetted to Bwindi National Park in 2002 by the Uganda Wildlife Authority as part of the park and yet it belonged to Residents. The angry residents say that since then they have suffered a lot of challenges like processing land titles and acquiring loans from Banks because when they approach these authorities the system shows that the land belongs to Bwindi National Park.

According to the Director of field operations at Uganda Wild Life Authority Tumwesigye Charles in his engagement with the locals of the Mpungu sub-county, he admits that it was an error committed by the team that was doing the demarcation of the park where they used the road as the boundary instead of a river but as UWA they are doing everything possible to ensure that they correct that error.

However, residents say that it has taken a long because they reported the matter in 2002 and since then they have never received justice up to now urging that they have faced numerous challenges like failure to process land titles for their land and many others. Now residents can only use this land for tea cultivation in fear of doing other big ventures due to the lack of land titles.

Steven Ikamukuba a lawyer who has been assisting community members in acquiring land titles noted that the disputed land is 770 acres that are now currently used for tea cultivation. He blames this on the leaders and the parliament which passed a resolution without consulting the locals about the matter; he then asked the government to either give the land back to the residents or to compensate them.