UGANDA PLANS TO REHABILITATE PORT BELL AND MWANZA PORTS FOR ALTERNATIVE OUTLET ROUTES TO THE SEA VIA THE PORT OF DAR ES SALAAM.

Business News By Leo Odera Omolo In kisumu City.

The Kenyan Kilindini harbour, located at the coastal city of Mombasa may soon loose its lucrative freight business to the Tanzanian port of Dar Es Salaam, if the plans envisaged by the Ugandan government to rehabilitate the Port Bell {Luzira} and Mwanza Port in Tanzania succeeded.

The Kampala regime has re-launched the new development of Port Bell {Luzira}, the biggest port in the western shore of Lake Victoria. The envisaged ambitious plan is estimated to cost the government USD 13 million { Ushs 24 billion}. This project, the government maintains, will rehabilitate its freight services across Lake Victoria..

The plan was disclosed this week by the Director of Transport in the Ministry of Works, James Itazi, who explained that the Ugandan government has already allocated the funds, amounting to USD 1.7 million[Ushs 3.5 billion} in the 2009/2010 fiscal year, to kick-start the work.

Although not discussed openly by the government of Uganda, the plan may have been rushed forward because of the highly charged political atmosphere in Kenya. It may be recalled that the Kenyan Uganda railway system was uprooted several times last year during the political unrest associated with the 2007 post election violence in Kenya, thus completely crippling the movement of freight to Uganda. The same thing happened again recently, when Uganda invaded Migingo Island of Kenya.

The planned development includes the rehabilitation of the dry dock and its remodeling to enable it to handle containerized and general cargo.

“However, the space for expansion is too small to handle multipurpose and containerized ships”, Itazi said in an interview with the SUNDAYVISION.

The Port Bell is connected by 9 kilometer railway line to the capital, Kampala and is close to the City’s Industrial and business park project in Namanve area.

The director was, however, non-committal on the commencement of the construction works, including details of when the biding and tendering process would be done.

Itazi said the dry dock would offer a direct connection with Dar Es Salaam port thus avoiding crossing the densely populated greater Kampala metropolitan area.

The development of the port, will be short term intervention only to handle the current traffic of cargo.

With the problems associated with over reliance on the Northern Corridor route, he said, it was imperative the Uganda urgently develop an alternative, but competitive second route to the sea via Dar Es Salaam.

The director said that the development strategy would involve addressing physical infrastructure constrains like ports, railways, roads and the provision of adequate resources associated with maritime facilities.

The project, he said, includes docking containers and fuels storage facilities, handling equipments, such as are required, and improvement of facilities by both Uganda and Tanzania..

“The development partners and private sector are therefore requested to provide the necessarily required funding to develop the route, said Mr Itazi.

For close to two decades ever since the accession of President Yoweri Museveni to power in 1986, the land –locked Uganda has been trying all the tricks in the books to abandoned the use of the more efficient and convenient Kenyan Port of Mombasa. At one time, it had proposed to rehabilitate the Port of Tanga and the construction of a new railway line from the Tanzania northern town of Arusha across the Serengeti Plains to Musoma or Mwanza. But these proposals hit the rock as the environmentalists the world over were vehemently opposed to the idea, saying it would adversely affect wild animals at the world famous Serengeti National Game Park.

The plan also had no blessing of the Ugandan business community, which cited excessive pilferage of cargo at the Dar Es Salaam port.

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leooderaomolo@yahoo.com