KALANGALA | PASSENGERS | STRANDED

Passengers were on Tuesday morning stranded at Bukakata docking pier waiting for the MV Ssese, the only vessel in service plying the Bugoma-Bukakata route on Lake Victoria.

The vessels connect passengers and their cargo to the Kalangala Islands district from Masaka in Bukakata. Initially, the route is connected by two vessels, MV Pearl and MV Ssese, operated by Kalangala Infrastructure Services Limited (KIS).

Last month, MV Pearl suspended operations for overhaul maintenance, leaving only MV Ssese in operation. Since then, traffic has increased on either side of Bukakata in Masaka and Bugoma in Kalangala, leaving the majority of passengers stranded.

KIS provided a tentative single ferry schedule, indicating that the vessel will always start services by 6:30 a.m. Passengers narrate that despite the schedule, the trips are no longer enough to carry passengers and their cargo cars.

Herbert Kavuma, one of the passengers, said that cargo and heavy trucks should have their own trips to decrease traffic.

“We failed to master the vessel's time of departure from Bugoma and Bukakata, and many times, we got stranded at docking piers waiting." Some passengers also resort to using wooden boat engines, which are "risky when it comes to the safety of passengers and their goods,” said Kavuma.

Sailors led by Deo Ndawula have appealed to KIS to speed up the maintenance services of MV Pearl to address all these challenges. 

Currently, the overhauling of MV Pearl is nearing completion, and the vessel will be dry docked for two weeks to check its underneath layer as well as paint.

After all major maintenance services, Joseph Mulindwa, the Kalangala Infrastructure Services Limited, assured islanders recently that the vessel will resume operations in mid-October after all major maintenance services.