Managers of hotels, lodges and guest houses have been asked to disclose details of the people they host every day, as part of the new measures to fight urban crime, in Kampala and neighbouring districts.
Police’s Chief Political Commissar Asan Kasingye says the Uganda Police Force has resolved to make it mandatory for all commercial accommodation centres to share names of all people they accommodate to nearby police stations on a daily basis.
AIGP Kasingye said the shared names shall be used by intelligence agencies for proper documentation of individuals hosted in a given community, where they came from and their next destination.
“We have also realised that LCs have not been implementing this issue of registering new residents in their area. You may have a register of people in your area but new people are coming and so they don’t take it upon themselves to register new people. You will make sure hoteliers register people every morning and take that list to the nearest station so that the intelligence can make something out of that,” he said.
Similarly, Kasingye said police are also going to help all Local Council Ones (LCI) Chairpersons have village WhatsApp groups for all residents that have smart phones including commanders of nearby police stations.
The police believe that Village WhatsApp groups will enable members to alert their leadership in time and improve the response time to alerts shared by members.
At least more 30 homes and factories have been raided by armed gangs in Kampala and its outskirts in recent weeks.
