Strictly punish ship owners and captains who do not turn on voyage monitoring devices
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has just issued a document requesting the People's Committees of coastal provinces and cities to direct the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to require ship owners and captains to turn on the journey monitoring device 24/24 hours when fishing in the sea. In case the ship owners and captains intentionally violate the regulation by not turning on the device to connect to the shore, they will be strictly punished according to regulations.
This is one of the solutions to strengthen the management of fishing vessels operating at sea and overcome the EC's "yellow card". At the same time, implementing Directive No. 45/CT-TTg of the Prime Minister on a number of urgent tasks and solutions to overcome the European Commission's (EC) warning on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the regulation requires fishing vessels with a total length of 15m or more to install a journey monitoring device, turn on the device 24/24 hours and connect to the shore station of the provincial Fisheries Department for management.
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The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also requested the People's Committees of coastal provinces and cities to direct the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to inspect, review, and count Movimar equipment in use, damaged, lost, and recalled according to the Ministry's instructions to recover, maintain, repair, allocate, and reinstall for fishing boats in provinces in need according to the new allocation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
At the same time, upgrade the shore stations at the Fisheries Sub-Departments and the terminals installed on fishing vessels to synchronize and be compatible with the shore stations to meet the requirements of automatic location updates from fishing vessels to the shore stations every 2 hours.
Previously, the EC had issued a "yellow card" to Vietnam's seafood products related to illegal fishing. To overcome the EC's "yellow card", Vietnam has recently resolutely implemented many solutions, gradually preventing, minimizing and eventually eliminating IUU fishing in foreign waters.Permanent Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan said: "After Vietnam resolutely implemented solutions, the situation of fishing vessels and fishermen violating illegal fishing in foreign waters has decreased significantly. In particular, fishing vessels violating in Pacific island countries have almost disappeared; currently, there are only cases of fishing vessels and fishermen being arrested and handled in overlapping and disputed historical waters due to unclear demarcation."
In addition, Vietnam also promotes the traceability of seafood products according to regulations to prevent raw materials from IUU fishing activities from entering the production chain... At the same time, information and propaganda are promoted widely every day on mass media from the central to local levels. Thereby, people and fisheries management officers have a deep awareness of combating IUU fishing, and fishermen's awareness of law compliance has been raised.