Policy failure, cause of illegalities in the fishing sector – GTA
Mr. Richester Nii Amarh Amarfio, Secretary of the Ghana Tuna Association (GTA) has affirmed that failure of the implementation of policies including monitoring is the cause of the indiscipline in the industry.
“There are a lot of issues in the fishing industry and until we address them as a nation, where we have a policy that drives processes in ensuring that the fishery sector is sanitized, we will have the limitations we are encountering,” he said.
Mr Amarfio who was speaking at the Ghana News Agency Industrial News Hub Boardroom Dialogue Platform and said the systems needed to work to put a check on the activities in the sector.
He said operations in the national territorial waters involved nationals across the globe, Koreans, Chinese, and Europeans among others, therefore it was an erroneous impression for some media publications to single out nationals as the cause of the problem in the fishing industry in Ghana.
“The fishing industry challenges have nothing to do with the Chinese but rather the lack of or the poor enforcement of laws for the industry,” he said.
He said there must be a focused policy on improving fisheries infrastructure development by addressing emerging issues and challenges with the aim of sustaining the sector for national development.
Mr Amarfio added that the fishing sector played a major role in the socio-economic development of the country and the policy needed to consider how to build the capacity of the Ghanaian fishing industry so that “we have Ghanaian crews and captains and all that is needed for the fishing industry”.
Mr Amarfio who is also the Director of Operations for Laif Fisheries, and a fisheries advocate called for policies that would stimulate the growth of the local fishing industry to create jobs for the locals, who were threatened, adding that the local industry would be affected if the foreigners were taken out from the system.
He said Ghana did not have trained seamen, “we can’t do without for instance the Korea crew, 85 per cent of our partnerships are Koreans if they exit the system as they wanted to do, the system especially the tuna industry will collapse. The challenge is not about dealing with the other nationals it is because we do not have trained seamen”.
Mr Francis Ameyibor, Ghana News Agency, Tema Regional Manager explained that activities on the sea were dynamic, but under-reported from the media and the agency had created a platform to offer stakeholders news channel to reach out to the world.
“As Industrial News Hub, GNA-Tema has created a platform for industrial players to use, for other stakeholders to reach out in a proactive means while serving as grounds to address national issues,” he said.
Mr Ameyibor said GNA-Tema reporters were venturing into ocean or sea reportage which was an untapped field of journalistic practice in the country, “we must help to protect the sea, as the ocean is an environment where a lot of activities occur daily”.
Source: GNA