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Ukonga: Evicted family lives in chicken shed
2005-09-21 07:53:11
By Emmanuel Kihaule
Families that were forcibly evicted from the former ATC staff quarters at Ukonga in Dar es Salaam are living in squalid conditions after they were thrown out of their houses.
The Guardian tracked down one of them at a poultry shed that was let out to him by a Good Samaritan.
Some of them depend on alms for survival as they were deprived both materially and financially after the September 10, eviction through which they lost all their possessions.
We managed to trace one of the evictees, Alexander Masota, who is a flight engineer with Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL).
We found six of the eight members of his family crammed in a single-room structure at Ukonga Saba Saba.
The structure was initially a poultry shed.
The other two relatives are in unknown places, he said.
A Good Samaritan sheltered the family in the poultry house when they were found sleeping on pavements after being kicked out of ATC houses by prison warders and inmates.
Masota said that he would never have imagined such a thing could happen to his family.
’It’s bitter and none of us can endure it. We now live on God’s mercy and through the support from friends and neighbours,’ he said.
For instance, he said, his 14-year-old daughter, Bugedu Alexander, who is a student at Loleto Girls Secondary School in Mwanza, was shocked when she came home at the weekend for mid-term break.
She collapsed when she saw the squalor her family lives in.
”She could not believe what she saw. She collapsed as we welcomed her to our new home.
We rushed her to Aga Khan Hospital, where she underwent resuscitation and discharged upon recovery,” he told reporters.
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