By Francis Lubega
8th Aug 2023
Members of Parliament from Islands have called on the government to urgently conduct a navigation survey on all water bodies.
This follows an incident where at least 20 people died after a passenger boat they were travelling in capsized in Lake Victoria on Ugandan waters in the wee hours of Wednesday morning last week.
The ill-fated giant boat, locally known as Kinaala, was transporting passengers and cargo from Lwanabatya landing site in Kyamuswa County, Kalangala District to Kasenyi landing site near Entebbe in Wakiso District, according to fishermen.
Now, MPs led by the Shadow Minister for Fisheries who is also Kalangala Woman MP Helen Nakimuli say that water bodies were last surveyed in 1900 and the current navigation charts are out dated.
They propose that a new navigation survey needs to be conducted to enable identifying danger spots like where they are rocks in the lakes and also mark them to enable travelers on water avoid them.
They have also expressed disappointment with the police marine unit for failing to retrieve dead bodies of those who capsized in the last week incident.
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