I read today’s Standard nikaona hii story ya tilapia imported from China flooding Kenyan market.
Reportedly a box of frozen tilapias which holds 60 fish of between 200-300gms, is being sold at Kes 2000 in Kisumu, which translates to Kes 34/tilapia , the same size fished from Lake Victoria goes for between kes 100-200.
An official from the importing co , East Africa Sea Foods, says that they decided to fetch fish from China to meet the ever increasing demand since fish stocks in Lake Victoria are dwindling.
By the time of going to press, the company’s premises were full of traders waiting to purchase the FMCGs.
Kisumu watu wanaoshea gari kwa lake, nothing is ever done about hyacinth halafu nobody cares much about controlled fishing…people even taking the small young fish out of the water and don’t even bother to throw them back…
But the moment government gets serious with the amount of fishing quotas, prices will increase, hapa hawa fishermen hawana jibu against these imports. Then how serious is kbs in checking the quality of these made in China fish?
Big question is … how are these folk able to fish, package and export to Kenya and still be able to sell it cheaper than the lazy Kenyan who only takes it from Nam.Lolwe and sells it 30 minutes later?
we can all agree that the numbers are dwindling from the lake…you blame it on over fishing, pollution etc But Chinese heavily invested in high sea fishing where the waters weren’t polluted…they moved their fishermen from small tag boats to ship fishing. on the other hand fish had the money in yester years nobody save…just fish for sex or sex for fish, to much kura imeibiwa shenanigans. when global trade hit its jubilee namalisa sisi.