Worry as Lake Albert eats up villages in Pakwach

At Kal landing site in Panyimur Sub County in the West Nile district of Pakwach, a young woman wades through fast running water in what used to be a dry land.

On her head, she is carrying a yellow jerry can full of water that she has fetched from Lake Albert, this water will be used at home for cooking, bathing and drinking.

This is the fate of the majority of people who reside in the villages of Panyimur, Dei, Pakwach town council and parts of Wadelai.

The rising water from Lake Albert is slowly but steadily eating up their homes, and in some areas the water has climbed a kilometer into the mainland destroying hundreds of homesteads, three schools, markets and safe water drinking points such as boreholes.

In Panyimur Sub County alone, over 150 homesteads are affected but the district leadership says the rising water on Lake Albert and River Nile is affecting people who stay in a stretch of over 80 kilometers

“It’s a stretch of about 85 kilometers, and then about one kilometer inwards, they are all affected,” says the LC5 chairperson Steen Robert Omito.

He adds that three schools have been submerged.

“We have Ocayo Primary (school) that got submerged completely”.

The two other schools that have been submerged are Owere and Wangkado primary.

The  problem of the rising water levels on Lake Albert is affecting more than just education,

Michael Bithum a fisherman at Kal landing site stands hands akimbo as he points to a faraway distance in the lake where his house used to stand.

“My house was about 800 meters from here, the water came slowly from around 2019 and destroyed everything, and I had to shift up in the hills” he recounts.

The Pakwach district leadership led by the woman Member of Parliament Jane Pacuto are concerned that the office of the Prime Minister is not paying attention to a disaster that has taken five years and it is getting worse.

Pacuto says “I am passionately appealing to the government, these are your people, come and buy us land and we move away from this threatening flood.”

According to her, the water has risen 700 meters above the buffer zone, and the people have nowhere to go.

Robert Onenkwung a resident of Panyimur has been left perplexed as to where the water has come from, while Fred Mungu a resident of Pakwach town council blames nature for their suffering.

“I am surprised, you cannot compete with nature really, nature has its own ways” he says.

The rise in the water levels has been ongoing since 2019.

The  plight of the people here is calling for the intervention of the office of the prime minister.

But the director of mobilization in the ruling National Resistance Movement party Rose Mary Sseninde Nansubuga has visited the area, and with the 2026 general elections closing in she says the relevant government departments have to act fast

“Maybe give them land where they can shift (because) if they don’t do that they will be swallowed”, she adds that a report about the disaster will be forwarded to President Yoweri Museveni .

“And our chairman who is also the President of the Republic of Uganda, I am sure he has got some information, but we need to time and again remind government about some of these issues.”

The rise in the water levels on Lake Albert and river Nile is similar to the same phenomenon happening on Lake Victoria, Lake Kyoga as a result of climate change and destructive human activities such as deforestation, and encroachment on wetlands.

As for the case of Pakwach district, the same phenomena is believed to have happened between 1962, to 1963, but back then the water receded after a few months.