After the February 2019 boat count and water worthiness assessment on Lake Victoria, government enumerators have raised preliminary public alarm bells about the defectiveness of most boats setting sail on our waters.
In a bid to reduce on-water accidents, President Museveni last year ordered the electronic registration and monitoring of vessels plying Uganda’s waters. This followed the November 24, 2018 capsizing of MV Templar on Lake Victoria, which killed about 32 people. Almost five months later, YUDAYA NANGONZI brings you the preliminary findings of phase one of the vessel enumeration exercise conducted from February 5 to 9, 2019.
Traditional wooden boats are the commonest means of transport on Lake Victoria though the rickety vessels remain a danger to users. A report compiled by the ministry of Works and Transport found that the timber currently used in boat construction is largely of poor quality due largely to the absence of boat building standards.
It was found that majority of the wooden boats mostly powered by outboard petrol engines were built after 2015. Before then, we had mainly fibre boats and steel or aluminium hull vessels. According to the report, the material used for the vessel’s hull construction is important in determining the structural intergrity, dry docking intervals for vessels and their lifecycle analysis.
“It can be noted that 97 per cent of the vessels enumerated had a wooden hull. Wood, if not treated and painted, deteriorates quickly and is more vulnerable to damage in cases where landing sites are not well developed,” reads the report that has recently been discussed by the ministry’s top management.
ALTERNATIVE MATERIALS
“There is need to plan for better alternative materials at landing sites such as fibreglass boats which accounted for only two per cent while vessels with metallic hulls were one per cent of the total boats enumerated.”
A total of 5,193 vessels were counted during the first phase of the exercise at selected landing sites on Lake Victoria, which represents approximately a quarter of the estimated vessels on Ugandan inland water bodies.
With 100 enumerators, the teams covered 85 landing sites in nine of the 15 districts bordering Lake Victoria, representing 53 per cent of the total districts. The team to Mayuge district counted the highest number of vessels at 925, followed by Wakiso (879 vessels), Masaka (802), Kalangala (798), Buikwe (529), Mpigi (488), Jinja (319) and Mukono (297).
In Kampala, the team counted the least number of vessels at 156 mainly because sensitization programs had to be conducted prior to the exercise. The boat census was conducted by the ministry’s department of Maritime Administration in partnership with the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency (CCTTFA).
Established in 2006, the CCTTFA, which funded the census, is a combination of road, railways and inland waterways network linking the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to the landlocked countries of Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
MORE FINDINGS
Enumerators used hard copy questionnaires to ascertain ownership of vessels, crew members, builders, and identification of the available life saving appliances as well as infrastructure on landing sites.
The boats were categorised as Runabout (30), Cabin Cruiser (36), Jet Ski (two), House boat (13), Sail boats (37), RORO (three), RO-PAX (one) and traditional/local vessels at 4,352. About 719 boats were captured as “others” on the questionnaire “yet they could have belonged under the traditional category.”
To understand the purpose for which the vessels are used, the boats were further categorised as leisure vessels, 92, commercial passenger, 375, commercial fishing 4,531 and four rental vessels.
The findings show that majority of the vessels on Lake Victoria were used for fishing, a smaller portion for commercial passenger services and others for leisure. “Most vessels didn’t have the needed life-saving appliances, and the owners expressed concern towards the high cost and low quality of the lifejackets in the market,” reads the report.
“The search and rescue services were also absent at landing sites and efforts to rescue people in distress were done by the fellow boat operators.”
Enumerators also didn’t find jetties for embarking and disembarking of vessels by users at most landing sites. Although there are local management committees, which control transport operations, boat owners and operators lacked knowledge about statutory legislation and policies governing water transport safety.
“From the sensitisation meetings held at various landing sites, people do not seem to have knowledge of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) responsible for their different issues,” reads the report. Meanwhile, the census also aimed to understand the type of fuel used to determine sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide emitted from vessels. It was discovered that majority of the enumerated powered vessels used petrol for energy generation.
A few vessels used diesel and these were mainly the RORO ferries on the lake operated by Kalangala Infrastructure Services, Uganda Railways Corporation and UNRA. Regulation 14 of the International Maritime Organisation requires all vessels to use fuel with limits of 0.5 per cent sulphur content, effective January 1, 2020.
To ensure safety, enumerators urge the department of Maritime Administration to regulate vessels operated by oars, coming just right after the petrol-powered vessels. Findings also show the presence of vessels powered by other means other than petrol, diesel and oars which the department needs to take keen interest in and explore ways of encouraging cleaner energy.
CHALLENGES
During the one-week exercise, the report notes that the variations in the number of landing sites covered by each team depended on the number of vessels enumerated, cooperation from boat owners and the local management committees, and remoteness of the areas.
In some districts, enumerators went with a tentative list of landing sites only to find that some had been closed by security agencies without official notice to users and other authorities.
A source that preferred anonymity since the report has not yet been made public told The Observer that some vessel operators were reluctant to give information afraid of the UPDF’s ongoing crackdown on landing sites.
“People thought we want to collect more information from them and later destroy their boats like UPDF has been doing. This [UPDF] exercise greatly affected our census since fishermen and boat operators were initially not sensitised on the clampdown,” the source said.
“On sight of our enumerators that had visible tags, some people were fleeing the landing sites.”
In the absence of approved boat building standards, the report found that the UPDF Marine unit had ordered all fishing vessels to be 28 feet and above in overall length or vacate the lake.
RECOMMENDATIONS
As a matter of urgency, the report calls for counting of boats on the remaining landing sites in order to have a complete data set on the lake. An estimated 20,000 vessels are on Lake Victoria but only 5,193 were recorded, according to the source.
Already, plans are underway to replicate this exercise in phase two to other navigable waterways like lake Kyoga, Albert and Edward starting this quarter. This is in addition to a periodic update of this data for accuracy. MDAs working the water transport sub-sector also ought to streamline their operations and have “clear boundaries of interventions and mandate.”
Other recommendations are constructing basic infrastructure at landing sites for docking vessels, conduct more public awareness and sensitisation campaigns on all waterways and regulation of the importation of life saving appliances to consider quality and cost.
In the interim, The Observer has also learnt that the Inland Water Transport Bill 2018 is due for submission to Cabinet for further scrutiny by end of April. Last week, officials at the Works and Transport ministry met the First Parliamentary Counsel to iron out “a few issues”. The bill seeks to merge archaic laws as old as 1904 and 1939 to strengthen water transport safety management, streamline and better regulate water transport safety and strengthen enforcement.
nangonzi@observer.ug