By Desire Comfort Ayebazibwe,
PARROTS UG|AGRIBUSINESS REPORT:
The government has given fishermen operating on Lakes an ultimatum of 3 months to either conform to new guidelines or be blocked.
State minister for fisheries Hellen Adoa says increased demand for species like the Nile perch, Tilapia, and silverfish has decreased the volume of available fish.
While unveiling new laws to govern the fishing sector at the media center on Friday, Andoa attributed the problem to high demand internally and externally, to support strategic direction for an increase in animal products.
Adoa explains that this is now threatening the limited fish factories in Uganda to collapse or close.
“Despite the effort to clear illegal fishing in our lakes, the lakes are still realising a decrease,by June 2021 ,8000 tones of fish were being collected, this decline is threatening factories to close since they are now operating at less than 10 percent capacity.” she explained.
She added that fishermen have resorted to illegal practices like fishing using illegal gears to target large fish, increased fishing for silverfish (mukene) with undersized nets at the shorelines, increased gutting of fish to remove walls in the lakes causes pollution.
She says other practices like extracting fish moles on the lake, smoking in ungazzeted areas, smuggling fish to neighboring Tanzania, trading in the DRC through Kenya has affected the quality and volume of fish.
She says: ”about the Nile perch,the stock assessment shows that majority of fish is below the recommended size of 50cm, massive kill of the Nile perch in January to March 2021 has affected the big size . We have come up with mitigation measures and we are not ready to make factories collapse”
Andoa warns;” Failure to follow the 8 guidelines we are giving, the ministry will have no choice but to close all the 3 major lakes by December 2021.”
Below is the list of the new guidelines.
- All small boats below 28 feet must leave the Lakes immediately. Anyone found using them by tomorrow will be arrested and tried at a high court.
- All Mukene fishers must use nets of mesh ,10mm in size and a maximum of 7 pannels ,20cm,maximum of 4 lights .This takes effect in October 1.
- All Nile perch fishers mist use gill nets of maximum 3 pannels ,78 meshes ,90 m.
Fish left for domestic consumption at landing sites must be gutted by licenced persons and sold to licenced people.All fish mole traders obtain it from gazzeted points ,fish factories ,landing sites. - All fish moles leaving landing sites must be accompanied with a permit ,quantity and destination processing permit.
- Fish smoking must be done at the landing site within agazzeted area by licensed persons.
- Fish Protection Unit (FPU)and inspectors should deploy at all border points to monitor entry of illegal gears and exit of imature fish .perptratours will be arrested and tried .
- All fish on transit should be checked at border points by fisheries ,inspectors and the Uganda Revenue Authority(URA).
