Government has watered down all torture claims and other forms of mistreatment of the fishing community by Fisheries Protection Unit (FPU) under the command of Lt. Col. James Nuwagaba.
Last week Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, suspended the house after Prime Minister Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda failed to show up in the house to explain all allegations of apprehending, beating and killing of fishermen.
Fisheries Protection Unit was in February 2017 instituted by President Museveni in an intervention to revive the fish potential and hence the ongoing operations.
Parliament chaired by Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah, , State Minister for Veteran Affair Lt. Col. (Rtd) Bright Rwamirama denied the allegations saying it is not true that the enforcers apprehend persons with mature fish.
He said, officers confiscate immature fish as prescribed in laws where, any person who in any waters of Uganda captures kills or injures any fish which is immature, buys or exposes for sale, in any waters in Uganda commits a crime.
“We find it unreasonable for some leaders to judge the UPDF’s enforcement on the account of false or wrong information and unfairly generalizing the entire UPDF as brutal, and extortionist in nature without any evidence,”
The continued decline of fish stocks and the limited capacity to regulate the sub sector led to the use of parallel enforcement systems and use of authorized officers and the subsequent mushrooming of impostors which led to further decline in fish stocks.
According to Rwmirama, the current operations on lakes Victoria, Edward and George have revived stocks of the Nile perch quantities in Lake Victoria and reduced foreign exploitation of water resources and as result four fish factories have started operations and two more are scheduled to resume operations next month.
Jinja Municipality East MP, Paul Mwiru weighed in saying fishing business has become very lucrative to the UPDF and they don’t listen to anybody except the president.
“We don’t support illegal fishing because there are over 500,000 Ugandans engaged in fishing and the industry supports over two million people. I have two suggestions; there should be a minister in charge of fisheries to address the issues we put to him and the powers to manage fishing activities should go back to the fisheries department,” he said.
The matter was then referred a committee responsible for fisheries to handle expeditiously and come back with a report.