Lake Victoria users to get education on fishing law

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 02, 2004

Lake Victoria users to get education on fishing law

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The Ugandan and Kenyan districts bordering Lake Victoria are to launch a campaign targeting lake users to publicize laws governing fishing and trade across the waters, Ugandan newspaper reported Friday.

To preserve the lake's fishery resources, officials from Kenya and their counterparts from Uganda agreed that they would launch the campaign against harvesting premature fish, the New Vision reported.

The resolution was passed during a ceremony in Uganda's Bugiri district in which the Ugandan officials handed over six boat engines confiscated from illegal fishermen on the Uganda side of Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa.

A Kenyan district commissioner, David Jakaiti, said at the ceremony that the community in the districts neighboring the lake rely chiefly on its fish resources.

"All we should therefore do is to encourage our people to carryout their activities in a manner that is acceptable by the three east African countries."

He said that it is advisable for the Ugandan security personnelto avoid pursuing the illegal fishermen up to the Kenya side of the waters without notifying their counterparts.

Bugiri district vice chairman George Ouma, however, claimed that the majority of illegal fishermen on the Uganda side of the lake are Kenyans.

Ouma said "if we decided to go to the lake now and carry out anoperation to confiscate illegal fishing gear, we would get more than 200 suspects within a short time and the majority of them would be Kenyans."

Another Uganda district official, George Bageya, called for legislation harmonization relating to fishing on the lake shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

"Some of the fishing practices considered normal in Kenya are illegal in Uganda. We need to act decisively on this," Bageya said.

Source:Xinhua

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