Over forty bodies still missing after Lake Victoria tragedy

 

It’s a difficult time for about forty families in Uganda as they are still in the dark about the whereabouts of their loved ones. Following the tragic accident that saw a boat cruise capsize in Lake Victoria on Sunday, at least 40 passengers believed to have been on board are still unaccounted for.

 

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Of the more than 100 passengers on board the MV Templar boat cruise, only 58 of them have been accounted for with 32 found dead and the other 26 rescued.

The boat cruise is said to have sank near Mutima Beach in Mukono District. It was sailing from KK Beach at Ggaba Landing Site in Kampala to K- Palm Beach in Mukono District.

Zurah Ganyana, the Police Spokesperson for the rescue and recovery operation yesterday evening said that efforts to find more bodies have been unsuccessful.

“The divers did not find any bodies in the boat. We are trying to turn the sunken boat to see that no human body is stuck at the bottom,” she said.

 

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Neither the police nor the boat managers at KK Beach have a manifest that can reveal the identities of all the passengers that were aboard the ill-fated boat.

A private diver, Mr Sula Kasujja, who searched around the sunken boat on Monday, said he saw a white cloth below the boat on the lake bed. The police tied a rope to the sunken boat, which had tilted on one side and started pulling it to allow divers to see whether there were bodies underneath but their efforts were unsuccessful forcing them to call off the operation.

 

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The first respondents to the accident on Sunday evening said the number of people rescued was more than the official figure given by police. According to them, those rescued most of them being women left the scene as soon as they landed on land as they did not want their identities recorded by police.

Mr Abdullah Nsubuga, a fisherman, said two coasters, a taxi and dozens of boda boda ferried the rescued persons to different destinations.

“I saw two coasters and a taxi taking the people we had rescued. Others used boda boda cycles,” Mr Nsubuga said on Monday.

Accounts of some survivors like Mr. Arnold Jjuuko Ssimbwa back up Mr Nsubuga’s account that some of the rescued people used public service vehicles to disappear.

 

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“We boarded the taxi, eight of us and headed for Mukono. Half way the trip, the driver started demanding Sh50,000 from each…, but later we negotiated for Sh20,000. He dropped us somewhere in Nakifuma and we boarded another taxi to Kampala,” said Mr. Jjuuko.

 

Do you think that there could be any survivors in ill fated boat accident?

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