Lake Victoria fishermen struggle to remove Water Hyacinth

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Fishermen on Lake Victoria continue struggling to remove the water hyacinth at Port Bell landing site.

The weed has from the early nineties blocked fish landing sites and communal water points along the lakeshore. It is highly disastrous to the lake for its ability to cut oxygen supply thereby causing death to aquatic life mainly fish.

On Saturday, the fisherman removed the hyacinth manually using pitch forks.

Hassan Bogere, the Chairman of the landing site says that hyacinth was making it hard for boats to dock at the landing site and affecting the normal activities of fishermen.

Hajji Wumalu Mukasa, a fish retailer says that the rotting hyacinth has polluted water on the lake which has reduced the amount of fish.

Sharifa Nakiwala, a restaurant owner at the landing site says the stench from the water hyacinth has affected her business. Nakiwala says that as a result of the sewage like stench caused by the rotting hyacinth, her sales had dropped from 80,000 a day to 50,000 shillings.

Bogere says that they decided to remove the hyacinth because of government’s reluctance.

He says that they can’t look on as the weed covers the lake.
Despite the fact that the water weed has covered a huge part of the lake, two dredger machines used to remove the weed have been lying idle at the landing site for the past months.

Edward Rukuunya, the Director of Fisheries says that the machines have not been abandoned but require upgrading.

Removal of water hyacinth has been a joint project carried out by both the government and Egypt under the Aquatic Weed project. Since 1992 when the project started, it is estimated that more than 83 trillion shillings has been injected into the project.

This week, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries said that it needs 4 billion shillings to remove the weed.

The water hyacinth problem became prominent in the 1990s with its impact mostly felt in 1995 when the weed-covered 90% of the Lake Victoria shoreline.

However, after efforts between the three East African countries as well as the international community, the weed, in 1997, started declining until in 1999 when it almost became extinct.

The campaign involved a combination of mechanical, manual and biological control methods.

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