KAMPALA- The Standards Utilities and Wildlife court has sentenced a Turkish national to pay a fine of 200 million shillings for clearing vegetation and depositing murram in Lwajjali wetland at Gongobe Village in seeta parish, Goma division in Mukono district.
Kerim Ray is the owner of a concrete construction company Yaman International Ltd who was issued with an Environmental Impact Assessment certificate on 14th/ June 2024 to put his project on 0.4 acres but upon inspection, it was found out that he had cleared 2.1 acres and backfilled the wetland with murram.
Now in addition to a 200 million shillings fine, Kerim has been ordered to remove the murram and restore the wetland within 30 days or to serve a 5 year imprisonment term in case he fails to pay the court fine.
Chief Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu however considered the fact that Kerim pleaded guilty to the offences and never wasted court’s time and resources to go through a full hearing and thus spared him the maximum penalty of paying 2.6 billion shillings in fine or serving 26 years in jail for offences of failing to comply with the conditions of an Environmental Assessment Impact certificate and depositing murram in a wetland.
Kerim has been jointly convicted with a Ugandan; Eric Avunalo but magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu only sentenced him to a caution after he pleaded to court that he did not know that the area where he was backfilling with murram was out of the approved area since he was acting on the instructions of his boss.
While sentencing the duo, Kamasanyu relied on the level of participation of each convict with Kerim taking the biggest blame for being the owner of the company who applied for the Environmental certificate whose terms he was aware of . That he acted with impunity by going beyond the approved area and depositing murram in the wetland.
The Court then ruled that 56 year old Kerim Ray should be helped to change and respect laws of Uganda in case he has a future project to run.
The court further observed that wetlands are very important in our lives since they filter solid waste, drain water and are a home to aquatic life. Their destruction is therefore linked to numerous consequences including floods.
