Environmentalists in Uganda say an important wetland that runs along a highway linking the capital city of Kampala to the southwestern town of Masaka is being harmed by aggressive dredging to extract sand.
The Lwera wetland is a catchment area for several rivers that flow into Lake Victoria, and sand serves as a water purifier. It is home to various terrestrial and aquatic species, and there are concerns that the dredging, which reaches over 12 meters deep, could alter or destroy the habitat of fish that local fisherman rely on for their livelihoods.
The road Kampala-Masaka road could also be at risk for flooding, as the Urban and Infrastructural Development Conference warned on Twitter:
There are regulations in place to control sand mining. But the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) doesn't have much of a budget to fund monitoring officers.
The chairman of the parliamentary natural resources committee, Alex Byarugaba, believed this contributed to NEMA failing to do its job to protect the environment by allowing companies to destroy the habitats of aquatic and terrestrial species:
NEMA is duty bound to regulate activities that happen on wetlands but because of the organization’s reluctance, environmental degradation is on the increase around areas where sand mining is being carried out such as the shores of Lake Victoria and Lwera
There's also little appetite to stop mining because it would hinder “job creation”, or so supporters say. The Ugandan minister in charge of water and environment has stated that for this reason companies that are mining sand cannot be stopped, although he insists that all companies should do it in the right way.
According to the newspaper Daily Monitor, several government officials from NEMA have been to the site to stop the deep excavations reaching over 12 meters, but their operations were cut short due to lack of financing