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Weed harvester to solve hyacinth menace in Lake Victoria

Thursday June 01 2017
Hyacinth

Water vessels are stuck on water hyacinth at the port of Kisumu on January 23, 2017. PHOTO FILE| NATION

An $810,000 aquatic weed harvester lies idle at the Kisumu port, awaiting commissioning at a date yet to be announced. Surrounding the harvester is the water hyacinth, whose recurrence is now billed as the biggest since it surfaced. Researchers approximate that the weed is covering 60,000 hectares, while the idle harvester has the capacity to clear 10ha a day at best.

“This machine isn’t cost-effective. Besides its timelines, the business costs to keep the machine running is too high,” Lake Victoria Basin Commission secretary Ali-Said Matano said.

Lake Victoria used to be pristine blue with shallow bays and was dotted with rickety rafts as fishermen earned their daily keep. Today, if you fly into Kisumu, you would be forgiven to mistake the lake for a vast coffee plantation, what with the hyacinth now covering the waters of the lake.

Crippled operations
Several kilometres away at the Kisumu port, nothing seems to be happening. Only two ships have made it to the berth in the past three weeks. In the past four months, less than 10 ships have docked compared with its glory days of an average of six ships daily. The ships have kept away, owing to the dangers of the hyacinth.

The port, which in the 1990s handled cargo worth billions of shillings, has for nearly a decade now been underutilised.

“We are currently at idle capacity. We have seen our store full of food and goods for export but none is going out yet. It is a logistical nightmare as the hyacinth has crippled our operations,” the Kisumu port manager, Mwalimu Disi, said.

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Only a few vessels can make their way through the thick carpet of hyacinth covering the port. So bad is the access to the port that ships can spend up to 10 hours trying to manoeuver past the hyacinth in order to dock, a distance of less than two kilometres.

Falling numbers
Since the start of the year, four vessels have got stuck as they attempted to dock at the port leading to massive losses, especially of perishable goods.

As a result, the number of ships has fallen from a daily average of two in December last year when the hyacinth spread began, to one in January and none in the past two months. Traders in fertiliser, sugar, cooking oil and soap have now resorted to using roads, a costlier way to move this goods.
“The business here is at its lowest,” said Mr Disi.

On another side of the lake, the Kenya Pipeline Corporation is looking at constructing a new oil jetty, which it says will ease the movement of petroleum goods between Kenya and it neighbours, despite the hyacinth menace fully covering its intended site.

A fortnight ago, KPC awarded Southern Engineering Company Ltd (SECO), a contract to build the $170 million Kisumu Oil Jetty within the next six months to enable export of fuel to Uganda and northern Tanzania.

Reprieve
While avoiding the technicalities of handling the hyacinth menace and how practical this will be, SECO’s administrative director John Msafari told The EastAfrican that the firm will construct the berthing place 250 metres from the shoreline for movement of vessels for loading fuel.

“We expect to excavate the black cotton soil to ensure the jetty is built on firm ground and with a deep 100 square metres square vessel berthing area,” Mr Msafari said, without explaining on how they plan to harvest the hyacinth, or ensure the berthing area is free of the weed, when the jetty is expected to be operational at the start of October this year.

The Ministry of Transport also appears to have had a change of mind about the current Kisumu port, proposing a new port six kilometres away, within the Kisian area, once the standard gauge railway (SGR) reaches the lakeside city. It has already entered into an agreement with China Exim Bank for a $140 million loan to finance its construction.

“CRBC will construct the $140 million port in Kisumu as we strive to increase business with our neighbouring countries. We have chosen this new location as it gives us the flexibility for expansion and allows us to build a logistics centre and an industrial park. The contractor is now expected to put up modern berths, state-of-the-art cargo handling equipment and dredge the access channel to enable the port to handle bigger vessels,” Transport Secretary James Macharia said.

Lost status

Kisumu port was once a crucial passenger and cargo hub that linked the country to Uganda and Tanzania through the Port Bell, Jinja, Bukoba and Mwanza ports. However, the collapse of the railways systems, and the recurring hyacinth problems that sank all the business at the port changed all that.
In March, the Kenya Ports Authority announced it will be taking over the management of this port from Kenya Railways with plans to revamp the Kisumu pier.
Outside of the Kisumu port, the hyacinth has also grounded activities at the Mfangano, Port Victoria, Mbita, Asembo Bay, Homabay and Kendu Bay piers.

Economic blow
“In its prime, this was a preferred shipping route of transporters, as it was easy to connect the countries. We would see ships from Uganda dock at Kisumu and Homa Bay, then the cargo moved by road through Isebania to the other parts of Tanzania. All we have left are tales of the good old days,” says Stephen Ogolla, a maritime official at the Kisumu port.

In the 1990s, before the collapse of the lake transport system , the Homa Bay port was the de facto pier for Tanzania-bound goods while Port Victoria served the western areas of Uganda such as Mbale and Busia. When the hyacinth hit the lake, it dealt an economic blow to over 30,000 households that depend on the lake. The weed is also associated with malaria and bilharzia among others.

READ: Will Lake Victoria go the Aral Sea way?

Many organisations and counties have been blamed for doing very little to eradicate the water hyacinth despite receiving millions of shillings to end the menace.

- Additional reporting by Angela Oketch

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