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KARAMOJA: Mark Lote a resident of Kautakou village in Ngoleriet sub county in Napak district always runs to Teso districts in search of Water for his animals due to shortage of water sources in the region. The movement of Lote together with his other fellow pastoralists to Teso region ends up in a serious fight between them and the Iteso.
Mr.Lote and other pastoralists in Karamoja could also not respect that they are in a different land not in Karamoja because they were convinced that the water that they are following were from Karamoja and end up in Teso.
“We could fight but because the Iteso are not good fighters they end up leaving us watering our animals,”he said.
Moses Dengel another pastoralist recalled one day when the Iteso people had threatened to poison the water sources that they used to water animals.
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“When I heard about the Iteso planing to poison the water, I sat down thinking what next with my animals,”he said.
However, the water conflicts between the Karimojong and Iteso has since ended now eight years back. This was after the Museveni government through ministry of water and environment embarked on construction of multipurpose water dams along the border districts with the move to address water shortage for animal production.
Each District along the border of Teso and Karamoja has at least got a big dam and a valley tank for every Parish across the entire region. In Kapelebyong district already farmers there are carrying out irrigation schemes planing their crops same as in Katakwi district.
Grace Agoe from Kapelebyong district said credit goes to the ministry of water and environment for the great efforts they have put in place. She calls upon for more dams to be built in every sub county saying apart from providing water for animals, these dams also prevent floods from destroying people’s families and crops.
This website has learnt that since the government embarked on the construction of the dams per district, there has been no incident reported about Karimojong crossing to their neighboring districts to fight over water and pasture since most of them are now grazing and watering their animals within these dams.
The pastoralists from Moroto district whenever it’s a dry season move with their animals and settle with thousands of their cattle around Kobebe dam, while Bokora pastoralists in Napak district also settled around Areceke water
dam watering their animals instead of crossing to Teso districts. The Dodoth also in Kaabong move and settled at Longoromit dam grazing their animals.
Mr. Jino Meri the district chairperson Kaabong testified that the construction of these dams have reduced conflicts and out migration of the Karimojong pastoralists to their neighboring districts searching for water but urged the ministry to keep on discealting the constructed dams to avoid them drying up.
Mark Lochio a pastoralists from Rupa Sub County says the presence of the dams has made their animals fatten because they are no longer stressed of over walking long distance in search of water and animals.
“Those days our cattle were not weighing 100 kilograms due to over walking several kilometers searching for water but now since these dams were constructed we have settle and our animals are now weighing from 300 to 600kilograms,”he said.
He said the only challenge disturbing them is cattle rusttling. Bony Logit an agriculturalist said the projects of ministry of water and environment were very seen compare to the projects done by ministry of Agriculture.End
