KAMPALA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Maritime officials from 10 eastern African countries are meeting in Uganda to share experiences on how best they can intervene in regional threats of a maritime nature.
A military statement issued here on Tuesday said the two week's training held under the auspices of the Eastern African Standby Force (EASF) aims at enhancing effective and competence skills in search and rescue operations.
"It is expected to improve the trainees' capability to maintain the Standby Force's capacity and readiness to intervene in regional threats of a maritime nature," the statement said.
Maj. Gen. Gavas Mugyenyi, Uganda's Deputy Commander Air Force said a skilled human resource is important to address any maritime challenge.
Mugyenyi said maritime officers should be able to understand the search and rescue system and organization to be able to coordinate, execute and plan maritime search and rescue operation up and down the chain of command.
Participants are from Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, the host.
Brig. Gen. Michael Nyarwa, Uganda's marine's brigade commander said the EASF, which is one of the five regional mechanisms of Africa's Standby Force has a maritime component. He said the maritime component has chosen Uganda as a host country because it has deployed a maritime component to secure the coast of Mogadishu, Somalia.
Uganda provides the bulk of the African Union peacekeeping forces deployed in Somalia.
