Kenya has formally moved to tighten control over its waters after President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Kenya Coast Guard Service (KCGS) at Liwatoni in Mombasa on Monday, November 20, 2018.
The new multi-agency service was created under the Kenya Coast Guard Service Act, 2018, and is meant to enforce law and order in Kenya’s territorial waters and the country’s exclusive economic zone.
The Ministry of Interior said the service will be based in Liwatoni, with a strong presence in Lamu, Kisumu and Mombasa ports. Its legal reach covers the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea and the wider 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.
The Act also paved the way for the Interior and Coordination of National Government CS to issue a gazette notice declaring 2 November, 2018 as the date the service began operations.
According to the structure set out in law, the apex body is the Council of the Kenya Coast Guard Service, chaired by the Interior CS. Members include the Cabinet Secretaries for Defence, Treasury, Transport, Agriculture and Environment, together with the Attorney General, the Chief of Defence Forces, the Inspector General of Police and the Director General of KCGS.
The technical committee is chaired by the Interior PS and includes the PSs for Treasury, Fisheries, Environment, Defence and Transport, as well as the Solicitor-General, the CDF, the IG, the Director General of the service, the Director General of the Kenya Maritime Authority, the Director General of the Kenya Ports Authority and the Director General of the National Intelligence Service.
Brigadier Vincent Naisho Loonena was appointed as the founding Director General of KCGS and will report to the council and the technical committee.
President Kenyatta said the service was overdue and linked it to wider Blue Economy plans. He directed the Fisheries department and the National Land Commission to repossess public fish landing sites that were illegally acquired, and said all gazetted landing sites at the coast, in Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana and other lakes or rivers should be recovered and secured by the end of March 2019.
He praised One Holding Ltd for voluntarily returning the Liwatoni fish landing site to the government and urged others who had taken such facilities illegally to surrender them before repossession.
The President also signed two executive orders establishing the Kenya Fisheries Corporation and the Bandari Maritime Academy, both of which he said would support the Blue Economy.
At the launch, which was also attended by Deputy President William Ruto, Kenyatta said Kenya had long faced illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, smuggling, piracy, drug and human trafficking, trans-shipment of illegal arms, and environmental damage caused by oil discharge, toxic waste dumping and destruction of coral reefs and coastal forests.
He said the country loses Sh10 billion annually through illegal fishing. He also said the Coast Guard would stop foreign vessels from stealing fish and would protect Kenya’s natural resources from illegal exploitation.
“The Coast Guard will ensure that our ocean will no longer be used by drug and human traffickers, illegal arms dealers and illegal fishing vessels. It will guard against exploitation of our natural resources by foreign countries and ensure that never again will a foreign vessel steal our fish,” he said.
The President said Kenya’s coastal and inland waters cover 222,950 square kilometres, equivalent to 31 counties, and noted that one quarter of the global tuna catch of 4.35 million metric tonnes, worth about $2-3 billion annually, is caught off Kenya’s coastline.
He added that within five years the government intended to create more than 10,000 jobs through trans-shipment and logistics hubs in Mombasa and Lamu, a cruise ship destination port, maritime training facilities and a revived Kenya National Shipping Line.
Deputy President Ruto said the Coast Guard Service would transform the economy for current and future generations, while Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i said the government would protect fishermen and marine resources and deal firmly with criminal activity in Kenyan waters.
“We will not negotiate on our marine resources and our territorial security,” Matiang’i said.
