President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has vowed to punish the Lake Victoria Tragedy Boat Operators who he accused of being responsible for dark weekend accident that has claimed dozens of innocent souls.
According to his statement, Museveni says that the operators will be charged with manslaughter.
“Obviously, the operators of this boat will be charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter, if they have not already been punished for their mistake by dying in the accident.” He states.
He adds that according to preliminary information from the security services, this, apparently, was a private, unregistered, unlicensed and maybe uninsured boat.
“The boat was owned by somebody called Templa Bissase or Bissaso and his wife, both of whom, apparently, perished in the accident. They were coming from a private beach and headed to another private beach in Mukono area. It seems the boat was overloaded because whereas it had capacity for 50 people only, it had about 120 passengers on board.” He said.
The passengers also seemed to be partying with a lot of music. They might not have heard the emergency commands of the captain, who is still unaccounted for.
Museveni added that when the Police and the UPDF got information from the fishermen, they rushed in and rescued 26 people. By today morning, 29 dead bodies had been recovered.
“This is why, apart from the anti-bad fishing campaign which the UPDF has been carrying out for some months now on the lakes, the government has also ordered the electronic registration and monitoring of all the boats so that we can know who is where on the lake and why.” Museveni added.
He also revealed that the five times I crossed in small boats or canoes some of the lakes of East Africa (thrice Lake Victoria and two times Lake Tanganyika), I found them very dangerous to cross when you are not fully prepared; no overloading, standby engines, life jackets, reliable navigation etc etc.
Let everybody take the warning from this tragedy.
1 Comment
Fine, but what the Presdo has not told Ugandans is that by the time UPDF and Polixce arrived, the “Harassed Fishermen” had already Rescued most of the Victims! Oh, and where were all the UPDF boats that are usuallyseen beating fishermen and burning their fist, busy patrolling the Lake foe “Bad fishing’, Uganda!