Assessing the livelihood of the Uganda Police force in their settlements and its impact on physical planning.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the livelihood of the Uganda Police Force in their settlements and its impact on physical planning. The study was guided by the following objectives: To establish the housing standard, the number of people per household, the extent to which planning regulations are implemented and to suggest ways through which the provision of quality housing can be improved. The study was based on only the quantitative approach. The study was limited to only the Police officers in Nsambya Police Barracks’ housing units and members of the police Construction and states committee. The total population of the police officers’ housing units was 2520 while total committee population was 35 people. The sample sizes were 100 and 25 respectively. Primary data was collected using both questionnaires and interview guides. The data was organized, edited, analyzed using Microsoft excel 2013. Data analysis outputs included descriptive statistics such as frequency distributions, percentages, mode and mean. The findings were presented in tables and bar graphs. The response rate in relation to the questionnaires was 70% while the response rate in relation to the interview guides was 80%. Majority of the respondents were male and married. All the respondents were educated to a favorable degree therefore clearly understood the questions and offered informed and elaborate points of view. The study recommends that the Uganda Police Force construction of storeyed flats as residential units for the ever increasing police force population, relocating of the police force in case of over congestion within the barracks, the police administration should look for ways of how it can acquire more land for expansion of the barracks or relocating some of the force, take part in public private partnerships as a way of availing more housing units for the police force, plan properly the accommodation of police officers separately from the entire police force. This study was conducted on Nsambya Police Barracks because it is the biggest barracks in Uganda and has the highest population and this created a wide enough population that would yield conclusive results representing other barracks in Uganda.