Dr Canisius Kanangire

The Lake Victoria Basin Organisation is drawing plans to regulate the use of Lake Victoria waters and resources by the countries sharing it. The move is meant to save the lake from pollution and receding levels.

The intervention includes allowing obstructed release of the waters to ensure that it is not depleted, officials from the Lake Victoria Basin Commission have disclosed.

“We need to address the issue of the water levels and quality by putting in place a policy framework to protect the resource,” the executive secretary, East African Community Lake Victoria Basin Commission, Dr. Canisius Kanangire, said.

Kanangire and other officials were addressing journalists in Kampala about the mid-term review of the Lake Victoria Environment Management project phase II.

“The project is meant to reduce environmental stress in the targeted hotspots and selected degraded sub-catchments. It is also meant to improve the livelihoods of communities that depend on the basin’s natural resources,” Kanangire said.

The lake Victoria basin covers about 194,000 square kilometres and has a population of about 40 million people.
Kanangire said the intervention will involve protecting everything, including forests.

“Environmental matters include socio-economic issues,” he said, adding that the concerns to be addressed were coming from the respective governments that comprise the East African Community.

The East African Community member states include, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

Kanangire said the commission was also working out strategies to reduce pollution, which, he said, affected the Lake’s biodiversity.

There have been complaints by scientists that huge amounts of effluents were being dumped into the waters by industrialists and other people compromising the integrity of the lake.

By ANNE MUGISA, The New Vision

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