Uganda: Families along proposed oil pipeline have allegedly lost land & human rights defenders intimidated; companies comment
"Fear and Oil in Uganda"
EACOP will pass through ten Ugandan districts and 178 villages; more than three thousand Ugandan households will lose at least part of their property to make way for it. Rural families along the route have complained of intimidation by oil workers and claimed that the money the companies have offered to compensate them for their lost land is inadequate. Activists working alongside these communities say they have been detained and threatened by Ugandan security forces...
TotalEnergies says it began compensating people in the spring of 2021 and attributed the long wait to the coronavirus pandemic and negotiations over funding with the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments. It claims that more than half the people who stand to be affected by the pipeline have now been paid. The company also says it added a 30 percent disturbance fee to promised payments, plus an additional 15 percent for two of the years people spent waiting, in hopes of plugging any income gaps... Ssekatawa, director of legal and corporate affairs at the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU), which regulates the fuel sector, also brushed off allegations of intimidation and unfair payment