Where is MV Kabalega’s replacement?

At the time the collision occurred, MV Kabalega, which was loaded with about 6,800 tonnes of wheat, was headed to Port Bell in Uganda while MV Kaawa was headed out to Tanzania’s Lake Victoria port of Mwanza.
MV Kaawa’s bow was damaged, but its crew managed to return it to Port Bell. MV Kabalega’s fate was different.
MV Kaawa struck Kabalega’s bow sending the railway wagons on its deck into the water.
The ferry’s buoyancy tank was also ruptured, allowing water to make a rapid entry that eventually made it sink.
The Budget Framework Paper prioritised the effort to replace the ferry as a “matter of urgency”.

Wider plan
It also hastened to add that it was part of a wider plan to “provide resources for the development of an alternative route to the Indian Ocean.
Pursuant to what had been laid out in the framework paper, Dr Suruma announced that funds had been set aside to enable government have the ferry replaced.
“Government will also develop a master plan for the further development of the national rail network and will, as a matter of urgency, provide resources for the development of an alternative route through the Port of Dar es Salaam by rehabilitating wagon-ferries on Lake Victoria,” he said.

“An additional Shs14 billion has been allocated for the purchase of a new ferry wagon to replace the MV Kabalega which sank in 2004,” Dr Suruma added.
It was not clear whether the funds had been drawn from the East African Community’s Transportation Project or from government through the Rift Valley Railways, but the expectation was that the replacement would be on and sailing by the end of that financial year.

The expectations were raised a notch higher in August 2008 when the spokesperson of the Privatisation Unit, Mr Jim Mugunga, was quoted by sections of the local media saying government plans to have the ferry replaced were in advanced stages.
“We are in the process of getting a marine expert to advise us on various specifics,” Mr Mugunga said.
The budget speech and Mr Mugunga’s comments made it look like the promise to have the ferry replaced would be fulfilled that financial year, but that did not happen.
Instead, government officials started speaking as if they were all reading from different scripts.

Announcement
In September 2009, more than 15 months after the promise was made, the then State Minister for Works, Mr John Byabagambi, announced that government would not be buying a vessel to replace the sunken MV Kabalega as had earlier been promised.
Sections of the local media quoted him saying government would instead improve Jinja Pier and Port Bell, which are the main in land ports on Lake Victoria.
Mr Byabagambi, said the move would allow private actors to invest in the development of the water transport network.
To that end, he said, government had allowed Burges, which have capacity to move huge volumes of cargo, to operate alongside the Uganda Railways network.
Unfortunately, nothing much has been done to reflect the change in thinking.

Impact
Freight services on Uganda’s water bodies have been on the decline ever since the May 2005 accident that resulted in the sinking of the MV Kabalega and grounding, until 2012, of the MV Kaawa.
According to the document, Jobs and Growth Compact, a publication of both the European Union (EU) and the Government of Uganda, which was released in January this year, operations of roll-on, roll-off (Ro-Ro) train wagon ferries on Lake Victoria has practically ceased.

Of the three Ro-Ro ferries, MV Kabalega, MV Kaawa and MV Pamba, used to operate between the ports of Mwanza, Kisumu and Port Bell. Only the MV Kaawa, which was relaunched in 2012, is operational.
MV Kaawa was to ply between Port Bell and Mwanza alongside the Tanzanian vessel, MV Umoja.
The bulk of the business has since been left to small load-on, load off (Lo-Lo) boats, which are loaded and unloaded manually.
The manual operation means that loading or unloading takes up to two days.

This has been hurting the business community, which has been calling on government to revive the railway and water transport systems.
The argument has been that this would reduce on congestion and time spent on the roads on which the country is reliant for the movement of goods and services.
One of the biggest arguments in favour of the development of a strong water and railway transport system is that it makes it easy and cheaper to move huge quantities of goods across long distances.

Limitations
This makes sense especially in light of the limitations imposed by the Vehicle Load Control Act, which prohibits haulage of more than three and a half tonnes on the roads.
That shift would help reduce the cost of transportation of goods, lower the cost of doing business and turn Uganda into a favourable tourism destination.

Unfortunately, all these have not been realised.
In Kalangala where the MV Kabalega sunk, the leadership has been calling on the government to salvage the vessel which they say has turned into a death trap.
In July 3017, the chairperson of Kisaba Sub-county, Mr Sam Nsubuga, told the State Minister for Works, Gen Katumba Wamala, that fishnets were getting stuck in the wreck and that a young man could not be saved from death by drowning because he got stuck in the wreck.

Official Position

The State Minister for Works and Transport, Gen Edward Katumba Wamala, told Daily Monitor last week that no much has been done by his ministry to have the ferry replaced or salvage the wreckage as demanded by the fishing communities in Kalangala.
“I have no seen it in our work plan. It is a desire that we have as a ministry, but we don’t have the funds in the budget to facilitate the process of having it replaced. As far as the proposed salvage is concerned, I am not technical enough to comment on that, but given the time that it has spent under the water, it would be better to spend money on replacing it than on a salvage operation. The best would be to work on ensuring that the wreckage doesn’t interfere with marine operations,” he said in a telephone interview with Daily Monitor.

Monitor Position

Government has for quite some time now been talking about the need to develop the water transport sector. While presenting the budget for the Financial Year 2013/2014, the then Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ms Maria Kiwanuka, said government planned to use it as a vehicle that would help it not only to achieve economic development, but also to foster regional cooperation and integration.
The intention, she said, was to revive water transport with special emphasis on rebuilding infrastructure on Lake Victoria and providing them with appropriate technologies to enable it become a major water way.
A move in that direction, she said, would ensure that Uganda got a strategic alternative route to the sea and also facilitate bulk movement of agricultural produce.

Very little has happened in terms of implementation of what she talked about, which would suggest that development of the water transport sector is not very high on its agenda.
Provision of 12 ferries and development of various ferry landing sites is not enough to make water transport a viable alternative to road transport.
The EU has made available Euro122.6million to increase the capacity of six different lake ports to handle larger volumes of goods, butthere is not much going on at the major ports, Port Bell and Jinja Pier and the warehouses and goods sheds at Jinja and Kampala railway stations remain largely under or unutilized.

It is however not yet too late to pick up the plan from theshelves where it is picking up layers of dust. There is need to pick it up and tweak it to incorporate development of the railway transport network if we are keen on lowering the cost of internal transport, which would most probably translate into a reduction in the cost of doing business, increased profitability and stimulation of the economy.
We might be a nation with a long list of unfunded priorities and this is one of them, but we must find the resources to invest in this sector because it promises to translate into increased volumes of trade, investments and job opportunities.
It would be another great move in setting us off on the road to becoming the middle income state that we aspire to be.

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