Lake Katwe flooding leaves salt miners jobless for three months

Salt mining on Lake Katwe in Kasese District has been put on halt for the last three months due to flooding, rendering hundreds of miners jobless.

The floods destroyed salt pans, a major source of income for the community. As a result, the price a 100 kilogramme sack of salt has increased from Shs97,000 to Shs133,000  for buyers from Rwanda, DR Congo and Burudi.

“I acquired a loan of Shs21 million to maintain my salt pans but shortly after the lake flooded. I now have no alternative means of continuing servicing the loan,” Ms Anent Kobusingye, a resident of Kikoni village, said.

Salt pans are flat expanses of ground covered with salt and other minerals in the lake.

The Katwe-Kabatooro Town Council chairperson, Mr John Bosco Kananura, said salt miners are counting losses after the destruction of the salt pans.

He said the town council had also lost local revenue since the activity has been generating Shs58m monthly.

The chairperson for the Mahonde Salt Extraction and Traders Association Limited, Mr Rogers Mpirwe, said since the lake has no outlet, its water volume has increased, coupled with heavy rain.

Mr David Ssekanabo, a salt miner, asked the government to come to their aid and use advanced technology to pump out the flooded water from the lake.

“It’s not only us but also the goverment which is losing in this business because it collects local revenue from us. If we continue spending many months without working, the government will also lose revenue,” he said.

Salt mining on lake katwe

Lake Katwe has a salt rock that lies on a contour line that connects lakes Munyanyange, Nyamunuka and Kasenyi (Bunyampaka). The lake is the chief producer of salt in Uganda. It was formed as a result of volcanic eruption about 10,000 years ago.

The water body is about 9km wide and the deepest point is six feet. There is a raised settlement near the lake which people who came from neighbouring areas to buy salt called “aha katwe”. It is from this that the name Katwe was derived. It is uniquely partitioned into various “plots” called salt pans.

The pans are square like, measuring nine feet wide and two metres deep. They are dug using hoes and demarcated using earth and pieces of wood.

According to Richardson Ouma, an employee at Katwe Tourism Information Centre, the lake has more than 1,000 salt pans though only 800 are registered by Katwe Town Council.

There are two salt mining activities at the lake: rock salt activity and salt winning.