Overview: Area councillor calls for security
"All our businesspeople who had rapidly developed the area are now worried. It's one attack after another," Bindandi said. "They pay taxes, so why can't the government protect them? We need a police post on this road, which has become a hotbed for armed thugs."
A businessman in Kitagobwa, along Nangabo road, was shot and killed by unknown assailants during an armed robbery on Wednesday night.
Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Patrick Onyango identified the deceased as Deo Bwanika, a 51-year-old wholesale shop owner. According to an eyewitness, Joanita Mulungi, two masked men in jackets entered the shop around 11 p.m., pretending to be customers.
When she told them the shop was closing, they pushed her aside and demanded money from a colleague. Two more armed men, one with a gun and another with a machete, then arrived and ordered the employees to lie down while they approached Bwanika at his counter.
“He was trying to escape when they shot him,” Mulungi narrated. “They took all the money he had and emptied the safe, including coins, putting it into a large bag that already contained more cash, likely from another robbery.”
Mulungi estimates the assailants stole approximately Shs 700,000 in cash. This latest incident follows a similar attack last month on Ronald Akwankwatsa, a shop owner in the same area. Akwankwatsa reported that eight armed gunmen stole over Shs 2.5 million from his business.
During that robbery, the assailants ordered him, his wife, and the customers to lie on the floor, and in the process, cut his wife’s hand as they demanded to know where the money was hidden.
Robert Bindandi, an area councillor, is now urging security agencies to increase their presence and combat the rising wave of armed robberies targeting local businesses.
“All our businesspeople who had rapidly developed the area are now worried. It’s one attack after another,” Bindandi said. “They pay taxes, so why can’t the government protect them? We need a police post on this road, which has become a hotbed for armed thugs.”
When growing up in the mid-60s good-old-days up to 1985, during working days offices and/or businesses/shops closed at 5:00pm. And on Saturdays, shops closed at 12:00 noon and Sunday was purely a Holiday.
But it was until the NRM leadership came to power and impregnated the country with unrestrained GREED in the vanity name of WEALTH CREATION and especially through corruption, that is when, From Sunday to Sunday and From 6:00am to 11:30pm it is business as usual.
As a result, many parents in fulltime business are strangers to their children and vice-versa. Such that businesses are alienating and dehumanizing many Ugandans especially at the expense of family value; as well as well health because of not enough rest and/or relaxation.
In other words, Ugandan businessmen/women should learn from the Indian/Asian business community. They religiously close shop at 4:30pm and on their way home, especially after having banked whatever earning of the day.
In that way, they do not lead the armed robbers into temptation during the dark/hours of the night. Hence better be safe than sorry and there will be another day to do business.