Opinion: Sand miners are destroying wetlands in Wakiso. They need to be stopped

David Serumaga

The Lake Victoria Basin is gifted with alluvial deposition that contains sand which is required by the construction and manufacturing industries.

However, when sand was recognised as a mineral in Uganda, it attracted a lot of investors to join the business but surprisingly, a number of unlicensed sand miners have taken over our wetlands in Kasanje sub county in Wakiso.

Three years back, the Wakiso district chairperson, Matia Lwanga Bwanika was involved in a bitter physical exchange with Chinese who were sand mining, using sophisticated gadgets without authorisation from the district.

According to the National Environment Act 2019, a person shall not, without the written approval of the relevant lead agency, reclaim or drain any wetland, disturb any wetland by drilling or tunnelling in a manner that has or is likely to have an adverse effect on the wetland.

The increasing level of illegal sand miners (wetland encroachers) in Lugumba-Naggombe Ssazi in Kasanje sub county has put our wetlands, neighbouring communities and roads at risk.

The environmental risk assessment in the encroached wetlands where illegal sand mining is taking place shows that there is a livelihood or probability of an adverse or hazardous outcome or event with consequences on human health or the environment.

The National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) should wake up and save our wetlands in Kasanje since it’s the principal agency in Uganda for regulating, monitoring, supervising and coordinating all activities related to the environment.

Are the people doing this backed up by the big government officials that NEMA has kept a blind eye or a deaf ear?

There is no way an illegal sand mining activity can happen for years without them acting on individuals who are milking our wetlands.

In some parts of Kasanje wetlands where people used to go for fishing, they can no longer participate in those activities since the illegal sand miners have encroached and damaged them. Villages are likely to lose shelter, toilets, access to roads, recreation and land for cultivation, as some unlicensed sand miners have illegally expanded their mining sites.

When such illegal activities continue, they put the lives of people and their animals at risk because the grazing and cultivation land is already occupied by sand miners.

There is also a danger of silicosis, a disease related with the inhalation of silicon dioxide. The open pits resulting from sand mining are a habitant for disease carrying vectors, such as mosquitoes.

They are also habitants for invading aquatic plants like water hyacinth and Kariba weed.

Last year, Uganda experienced a floating island which caused the national power outage, affected the fishing activities, the quality and quantity of water from water bodies, tourism and water transport, among others.

These floating or moving islands are a result of the continuous drilling or tunnelling of wetlands by the unlicensed sand miners which weakened our wetlands leading to its separation from the soils which ended up on Lake Victoria and River Nile waters.

The government injects a lot of money in road construction and maintenance but since these unlicensed sand miners know that they are doing an illegal activity and at a point of being chased away, they tend to overload their heavy tracks which damage roads and hence increase the cost of maintenance of these roads.

We can either regulate the illegal sand miners or leave them to milk our wetlands and cause damage to our nation.

The author is a concerned citizen