Innovate to enhance Fisheries Training - MAAIF

The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) under Secretary Mr Ronald Ssegawa has called on the leadership of the Fisheries training sector to be innovative to enhance fisheries training in the country.

“We need to optimize utilisation of the resources at your disposal to enable you to break even position and embrace public-private partnerships for services that the private sector could do better. This will enable the team to focus on fisheries training and put in place special programs to skill the youth in fisheries consequently increasing student uptake numbers from the present 260 to over 1000,” he said.

Mr Segawa made the remarks while commissioning the solar-powered water pumping and lighting systems at the Fisheries Training Institute Entebbe where he was representing the Permanent Secretary Mr David Kasura Kyomukama on Tuesday.

“Let us teach students not to look for employment but rather teach them to get skills to create employment and better their lives. It’s common to find people who have skills wanting to be employed instead of using them to better their lives,” he said.

The principal of the institute Mr Willy Ofwono Osinde said the solar plant is part of a Shs 600 million grant received by the institute to improve the industrial training of students, reduce the high cost of water bills, reduce electricity bills, and review the curricula whose time of implementation had expired.

“On average the institute spends Shs 3.6 million on water and Shs 3 million on electricity per month, we envisage by the close of six years the money that has been injected in these systems will have already been paid back and therefore make savings where we can invest elsewhere,” he said.

Mr Ofwono urged the government to establish skills development centres across the country to equip the youth with the required skills for the fisheries sector.

The project manager Mr Isaac Kyeyune said the system will provide a cost-saving water and electricity alternative solution for utility bills.

“The institute consumes 33,000 litres of water per day, the installed water pumping system is five cubic per hour thus it’s able to pump up to 40 cubic of water per day when you consider 7 to 7.5 hours pumping per day, it is able to satisfy the water demand for the institute thereby freezing the bills from National water,” he said.

Mr Kyeyune said a 6.5kw solar power generating system charged with batteries will provide power for two days addressing the gap of power blackouts.