Upon arrival, they were approached by a young man who offered to help them get a wheel cap at a reasonable fee. Within no time, their vehicle had been surrounded. A mob of mechanics started identifying one fault after another with their car with offers to repair. David and his colleague stood their ground until they heard activity under their car.
They got inquisitive only to realize that the wheel on their car had been removed. Without their permission, men began carrying out ‘repairs’ on their car at will.
Much to their dismay, they were then asked to pay for the ‘work’. To their shock, they were billed Shs 2.5 million amidst threats of further vandalism on the car if they did not comply.
They started making phone calls to a few friends and luckily one of them knew a security officer who liaised with the area local council defence secretary. Finally, the gang was calmed down and Lukiiza was asked to pay Shs 100,000 for the wheel cap. The LC official secured their safe exit from the area with mechanics threatening to throw stones at them.
“I can only imagine the number of people that have been fleeced in this manner and didn’t have as much luck as we did on that day,” Lukiiza said in an interview.
Many people have suffered a similar fate but have chosen to remain silent. One such victim who prefers anonymity says he once went to Kisekka for a window replacement. He was greeted warmly only to later realise that while he was speaking to the person he thought was going to help him, his tail lights were being vandalised.
When he inquired how and why his lights had been removed, he was told his car had come in that state. He was eventually forced to pay Shs 200,000 for his own lights. He left without the window. A key ingredient in the con is to make the vehicle immobile by removing tyres or even engines in some cases and once they are sure that you can’t leave, you are surrounded by an angry mob.
Replacing a wheel cap usually costs about Shs 40,000 within Kisekka and having it replaced should be a quick fix. Unfortunately for many people who drive there for fast solutions, it comes at unwanted costs. One is literally bullied into incurring costs that they have not planned for.
Police say they have done enough to try and curb the vice. Luke Owoyesigire, the deputy police spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan area, says police have been on a deliberate drive to rid the area of street mechanics through collaborative efforts with city authority enforcement teams.
Owoyesigire also argues that many of the victims don’t report their cases to police and prefer to stay silent, which allows this vicious cycle to continue.
“Why would someone opt to go to a place where they have heard people get fleeced off to work on their car?” Owoyesigire questions.
But a lot more needs to be done to sensitise the general public to stay alert. Kisekka market on any week day is a beehive of activity. Men in overalls are a common sight. Carrying one spare part or the other, they patrol the road while others sit idly on the terraces talking to each other.
It is a fairly noisy environment. A good number of mobile money points have been set up at the edges of the staircases to almost all the floors of the buildings, an indicator that the spare parts business is quite lucrative.
According to area LC-I chairman, Tadeo Mugerwa, the market was named after Samson Kisekka, the former vice president of Uganda, who had a hospital on that stretch. Kisekka market has since gained notoriety for suspect dealings and political activism fuelled by very many unemployed youths who loiter in the area.
“We receive many complaints about people being over-priced or conned but in most cases when you follow up, it’s not the traders with genuine businesses doing these things,” Mugerwa said.
Challenges
Among the challenges faced by the market management is recordkeeping, this is one of the loopholes that are being used by these masqueraders to act like they are Kisekka market employees.
Since management can’t control the number of people who loiter around, pretending to be mechanics, people should beware of whom they approach for help. It is also advisable for one not to park their vehicle in the area without supervision or leave it unattended to. Cars can sometimes get stripped for spare parts in broad daylight.
A mechanic who only identified himself as Ibrah says most of the dealers and traders at Kisekka are genuine but it is the boys they hire as helps who try to make extra cash as middlemen in dubious ways. This, according to Ibrah, has tainted the reputation of genuine dealers in the market.
“We pay taxes but the people in government call us criminals. We are very many genuine people here in Kisekka but people think all of us are bad.” says Ibrah.
Way forward
The market leadership is in the process of undertaking a mass registration through which they will issue identification to the actual traders in order to differentiate them from the conmen. This, according to Mugerwa, would help them easily identify the redundant youth and set up programmes to skill them in order to stop them from fleecing their own potential clients.
There has been collaboration between the market and law enforcement to try and bring offenders to book and arrests are made in some cases. The presence of law enforcement is vivid as there is a police post right next-door but Kisekka still continues to be associated with conmen.
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