MV Kalangala suspends operations
MV Kalangala will undergo routine servicing for 23 days. FILE PHOTO
KAMPALA- MV Kalangala vessel, which operates from Nakiwogo Landing Site in Entebbe to Lutoboka, Buggala Islands in Kalangala District, will effective tomorrow, temporarily suspend operations to allow it undergo servicing.
MV Kalangala is operated by Nation Oil Distributors Ltd, which undertook the contract in April 2015. However, servicing and repairing of the vessel remain a responsibility of the Ministry of Works and Transport.
Mr Sadala Musoke, the chief executive officer of Nation Oil Distributors Ltd, said the exercise, which is aimed at checking the vessel’s operational safety status, will last 23 days.
“We urge our clients to remain patient because this exercise is for their own safety. We had planned to do servicing late last month, but we realised that it would inconvenience tourists and other people travelling to the islands during the Easter holiday,” Mr Musoke said during a press conference last weekend.
“Every year, the vessel undergoes servicing. This exercise doesn’t take long and engineers from abroad are already in the country to do the work together with our local team,” he added. Unlike in the past, the vessel will be serviced from Port Bell, Luzira dry docking site not Mwanza, Tanzania.
“We commend government for accepting major servicing to be carried out from here. I am sure we will save at least 40 per cent of the money we have been spending in Mwanza,” he said.
Uganda has had the dry docking site for 30 years, but it has remained unutilised. Ferries would be taken to Tanzania for dry docking, in the process spending up to Shs2b for every ferry serviced.
The MV Kalangala vessel can carry 150 passengers. It plies only two routes from Kalangala, starting at 8:30am to Nakiwogo in Entebbe where it docks at 11am. At around 2pm, it leaves Entebbe for Kalangala where it reaches at 5pm.
