Training of commercial fishermen and their standards of living in Uganda: Case study Katwe fishing site in Kasese district

Abstract

This study set to find out the effect if training on the standards of living among the commercial fishermen in Uganda and those living at Katwe fishing site in Kasese district. The Department of Fisheries Resources annual report (DFR, 2012) indicated that fishermen in Uganda are improving in terms of incomes levels and general standards of living as a result of training offered to them, in the report, it was held that training of the fishermen has been done and the fishermen are on that effect using proper fishing methods and also they are adding value to their fish products by packing them and selling them to supermarkets around on a reasonable price. The research objectives where in to finding out the following; to examine the effect of training on the standards of living of the commercial fishermen, to find out the effects of knowledge and skills acquired during training on the standards of living of commercial fishermen and finally to examine the method used in training on commercial fishermen’s standards of living. The study used both qualitative and quantitative research techniques and different data collection methods were used in the field to obtain the data necessary for the study, these methods included surveys where self administered questionnaires were served to respondents their opinions were captured by answering those questions, another methods used was interviews where the researcher formulated an interview guide that had question which he asked the respondents to get the information required. The findings of the study indicated that training of commercial fishermen is done and there are various methods are being used, however the findings further indicated that the standards of living of the commercial fisher men have not improved having 73% of the respondents agreeing that the standards of living have not improve and only 23% agreed that the standards of living have improved. Some of the reasons for low standards of living among the fishermen according research findings were that the fishermen plan poorly and that they spend extravagantly. The study set out some recommendations in relation to the findings which would help the fishermen improve their standards of living one of them being, government and local authorities encouraging the fishermen to form Savings societies that would help them develop a saving culture that can improve their level of income and thus increasing their standards of living.