By. Damba Rogers.
The
commissioner, water resources planning and regulation, in the water and
environment ministry, Dr. Callist Tindimugaya is expressing worries over the
country’s low productivity of water, saying this has continued to impact on the
quality and quantities of products produced in the country.
According to
Dr. Callist, water productivity in Uganda per year stands at 10% which is very
low yet the country receives a total of 1000mm of rain per year.”With this
amount of water provided by the rain is more than enough to facilitate
agriculture transformation among other economic and domestic activities if
management well.” Says Callist.
He notes
that three years back, Uganda received 44 billion cubic meters of water
annually, 69% of this water was coming from Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzanian with
31% originating from Uganda but this water was wrongly being used by Ugandans.
But most of this water was not utilized and lost to other countries up stream
and the rest wasted through pollution.
Callist
maintains that water is going to be very key in Uganda’s transformation hence
the need to urgently handle it well by having proper storage capacities.
The Professor
at the college of agriculture and environmental science Makerere university,
Tenywa Moses adds that of the 1000mm of rain received by Uganda in a year, we
only manage to produce 1.5 tones of maize per hectare against the
scientifically projected 10 tones of maize per hectare.
Mr. Tenywa
further notes that these are very low figure in agriculture the back bone of a
country like Uganda.
He also
couples it with poor soil management by farmers who till the gardens year in
year out without giving it time to rest as one way to gain its fertility for
higher productivity.
He therefore
asks Ugandans to start thinking of irrigating their gardens and drop the common
knowledge of waiting for the seasonal rains to practice agriculture is they are
to register increased farm produce as well as fight the rooming food
insecurity.
With all the
above going on in the midst of scientist, they are planning better strategies
on how they will sensitize Ugandans on how to manage nature resources at their disposal
as they go on with daily economic and domestic activities in a bid to improve their
livelihoods.
The experts
now feel teaching ugandans to do water harvesting by constructing water tanks
for domestic use, digging valley dams for agriculture and other economic use is
the way to go coupled with advanced government technologies that will involve
water treatment for other use.
END