State to construct 800 cold storage units for fish sector

The government plans to construct 800 cold storage facilities around the country to preserve fish.

Fisheries minister Amason Kingi says the project will help boost the incomes of fishermen and other traders in the sector.

It was not clear how much the project would cost as officials said the ministry was still working on technicalities.

The vulnerability of fishermen has given middlemen the power to arm-twist them by offering poor prices.

The minister said that the biggest challenge in the industry is the rising number of fishermen who harvest fingerlings, saying that the trend will reduce the fish population.

He was speaking in Kisumu during a tour to establish the causes of the sector’s under-performance.

“An additional 100 fish ponds will be constructed in each constituency in Kenya to reduce the pressure on Lake Victoria, making a total of three hundred per constituency” he said.

He urged the fishing community to take charge of the lake because it is their biggest source of revenue.

He said that all the policies implemented by the government were geared towards increasing the number of fish in the lake.

“The government seeks to revive the revenue obtained from fishing which was initially the third leading foreign exchange earner and this will require the support of the fisherman, the processor and the marketer,” he said.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Fisheries Development, Mr Micheni Ntiba said that an International centre for Nile Perch Research will initiate a study to find out the causes of the drastic reduction of the fish in the lake and seek ways of reversing the trend.

“Lake Victoria is a shared resource and it will take the efforts of all the East African Countries to find a solution to its dwindling numbers,” he said.

The Nile perch is a lucrative species especially for  its fillet which is popular in the European market.

Sea Food Managing Director Sebastian Xavier said that the company was currently under-performing, with up to three times less the capacity that it should be running and attributed the trend to illegal fishing.

He said that too much fish is harvested at a tender age and were not given the chance to develop to maturity.