MUKONO – The National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) has halted sand dredging within Lake Victoria and arrested criminal entrepreneurs who were tapping into the country’s vast reserves of sand.
In an operation conducted on Thursday in villages of Mbazi and Buleebi in Mpunge Sub County, Mukono District with the help of Uganda Police Force’s Marine Unit, the environment watchdog also impounded dredgers that were being used in connection with illegal sand mining in and around Lake Victoria.
Mr. William Lubuulwa, a Senior Public Relations Officer at NEMA said those arrested will be prosecuted in court.
“We have done this before in areas like Kasanje, Katabi, NKumba, and elsewhere, and we shall continue to other places in this country because that’s our duty as NEMA,” said Mr. Lubuulwa, citing mandate from the National Environment Act No A.5, 2019 which outlaws disturbing the peace of lakes, rivers and wetlands.
“Illegal sand mining destabilizes the ecosystem because these areas are supposed to filter water, to manage flood, and also to house creatures. For instance, fishing as an activity is impacted negatively if people continue to do this kind of illegal sand mining. Therefore NEMA will continue to arrest these people and take them to courts of law if they continue to illegally mine sand in the lakes, and rivers,” said Mr. Lubuulwa.
He urged those involved in the illegal business of sand mining to adopt alternative means of livelihood like agriculture.
“This area is fertile, we can grow crops and do agriculture. There’s no day people are going to stop eating food. Let these people go and carry out agriculture, small scale yes but make it commercial, do a value addition and this can be done,” he added.
The Lake Victoria Basin is endowed with alluvial deposits that contain sand, a material that is in high demand by the construction industry.
Unregulated sand mining has prevailed around Lake Victoria despite the negative impacts of the activity on the environment, such as fragmentation of the landscape resulting in open pits that are habitats for invasive aquatic plants like the water hyacinth and the Kariba weed.
The open pits are also a habitat for disease-carrying vectors, such as mosquitoes; destroy access roads and the land that was originally used for grazing and cultivation has been rendered unproductive.
Despite the high demand for sand to support the construction sector and major infrastructural development projects such as roads, dams, and bridges; sand mining is an activity that must be regulated to ensure sustainable extraction of the resource.
Dr. Jerome Ssebadduka Lugumira who headed the Thursday operation urged the fisheries sub sector to join forces with NEMA against illegal sand mining. He said that by stopping illegal sand mining activities, NEMA is helping fisheries activities as well.
He explained that sand is the spounding ground for the fish, and “once you remove that sand from the lake, then you have removed the hatchery, you have removed a hospital, you have removed a nursery from the lake”.
Dr. Ssebadduka also a Natural Resources Management Specialist in Charge of Soils and Land in NEMA explained every tonnage of land that is leaving the lake is a disruption to the breeding of the fish.
“So all efforts must be made to remove all illegal vessels on the waters. I’ve heard elsewhere that Uganda has a sand resource that is shrinking and that it is high time we resort to mining sand in the lake, that’s a very unfair presumption. There’s sand elsewhere. We are not at the point where we should allow sand mining or dredging in the lake, because we have sand resources elsewhere in abundance on dry land and nobody should start entering into the lake because they feel that there’s no sand elsewhere,” Dr. Ssebadduka said.
He warned criminal entrepreneurs in the sand mining business to immediately abandon the idea saying that those arrested would be prosecuted under the courts of law regardless of their statuses.
