The rehabilitation works have started at the Homa Bay pier in a move that seeks to revamp all the three feeder ports in the Lakeside county at cost of Sh1.6 billion.

Kenya Navy has already taken control of the decades-old Homa Bay pier that has been dormant for years and declared it out of bounds to members of the public.

A visit to the pier yesterday established that rehabilitation works have started as the government moves to revive active marine transport and maritime business in Lake Victoria. The three feeder ports in the county are Homa Bay, Kendu Bay and Mbita pier. They were constructed by the colonial government 60 years ago, and are now dilapidated and no longer actively support marine transport operations. Thousands of traders from both island and mainland areas, especially fish traders and hawkers of consumable goods used the piers to transact business through the Lake over the years.

But the water vessels’ services stalled about 20 years ago, when active marine transport ceased to operate after the vessels that used to ply the routes namely MV Uhuru 1, MV Alestus among others were grounded in the dock yards in Kisumu Port and abandoned.

However, things changed when former President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga through their cooperation cloathed as handshake, saw the revival of Kisumu Port and several docking piers on the shores of Lake Victoria that had turned into white elephant projects.

Economic potential

The Kenyatta administration pumped close to Sh3 billion to revive the port, including and not limited to carrying out repairs of the old vessels that had stalled at the Kisumu Port for years, despite their enormous economic potential.

The former president commissioned the rehabilitation of the ports and building of more water vessels to ply the routes in Lake Victoria shared by the three East African countries – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Now, the state has since through the military engineers refurbished MV Uhuru 1 and MV Uhuru II to resume active voyages in the lake, which means more revenue return for the government.

Homabay County Director of Trader Collins Owiyo lauded the developments at the pier as good. He said they were making arrangements to reallocate fish traders’ stalls near the Lake.