Kalangala, Apac aqua-parks to boost fish harvests

The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries has invested in aqua-parks in Apac and Kalangala districts to boost fish harvests and transform the industry.

The Ministry of Finance secured a grant of €10 million (about Shs46b) towards the construction of the aqua-parks.

The initiative is being implemented under the Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Commercial Aquaculture (PESCA) programme.  

The Apac fish project is expected to create 400 jobs, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.  
The project, with an investment portfolio of Shs6.3 billion, sits on 556 acres in Onekgwok and Teboke villages, Tarogali Parish in Ibuje Sub-county. 

The government hired local contractor – Hardscreen Logistics Ltd – to design and build the aqua-park.

On June 12, Mr Paul Omanyi, the project coordinator for Apac and Kalangala aqua-parks, told Daily Monitor that under the first phase, at least 81 fish ponds with production capacity of 2,000 tonnes per cycle of six months will be constructed. 

An iceplant with capacity of 70 tonnes per day, and multi-species hatchery of five million fingerlings per cycle per month will also be constructed.

He said one fish pond will be one acre, and others will be 0.5 and 0.2 acres.  

The Kalangala fish hatchery project at Mwena in Kalangala Town Council is expected to boost modern fish farming and also create jobs for youth.

A local contractor – Engpro International – has been contracted for the project.  

The Minister of State for Fisheries, Ms Hellen Adoa, handed over the site to the contractor on March 12, 2020.
However, Mr Rajab Ssemakula, the district chairman, said they are disappointed with the delayed implementation of the project.
“There is nothing on site. The contractor is very slow and the first excuse he gave us was that they were expecting a consultancy team from abroad,” he said. “The contractor said much of the work is in the procurement of cages and other assembled materials,” Mr Ssemakula added.

Mr Jackson Baguma, the district production and marketing officer, said the project was to be completed in January next year, but 17 months down the road, nothing has been done. 

“The contractor is not at the site, he has not mobilised personnel and machines and the progress of the works is still at zero,” Mr Baguma said. 

Efforts to reach the contractor were futile as he neither answered our repeated calls to his known mobile numbers nor responded to them.

The contractor, however, said on their website that they have been asked to consider local skills as the first priority.

The contractor is also supposed to engage residents in the assembling and rearing of the fish during the design process.

Uganda produces up to 120,000 tonnes of fish from aquaculture, including production from small-scale fish farmers, emerging commercial fish farmers and stocked community water reservoirs and minor lakes, according to official data.