Resolutely implement measures to combat illegal fishing
That was the request made by Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha at an online meeting of the National Steering Committee on Combating Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing with coastal provinces and cities on the afternoon of October 25.
At Nghe An bridge, comrade Nguyen Van De - Member of the Provincial Party Executive Committee, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee chaired the conference. Also attending were leaders of relevant departments, branches, units and coastal districts and towns.
At the meeting, the representative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that since the 4th inspection in October 2023, the Central Government and the Government have issued directive documents and organized implementation. To strengthen the fight against IUU fishing, the whole country has launched operations and punished 4,237 cases of administrative violations in the fisheries sector. However, up to now, the situation has changed very slowly, not meeting the requirements according to the EC's recommendations. The whole country still has 61 fishing vessels violating fishing in foreign waters that have been detected and handled...
At the conference, to effectively carry out the task of preventing and combating illegal fishing in the coming time, representatives of ministries, branches and provinces and cities, based on the current situation, proposed solutions for implementation in the coming time.
In addition, localities also recommended that the waterway system in and out of fishing ports and storm shelters are often silted up, making it difficult for fishing boats to enter and exit. They requested the Government to prioritize and allocate investment budgets to build and upgrade fishing ports to ensure conditions according to EC requirements...
At the conference, Mr. Nguyen Van De - Vice Chairman of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee, on behalf of the Provincial IUU Steering Committee, briefly reported on the results of IUU implementation since the beginning of the year; including outstanding results in handling 3-no vessels, the mechanism of assigning patrol, verification and separate penalties. Thanks to that, the whole province has registered 495/615 vessels in the 3-no category, reaching 80.49%, higher than the national average. If the whole year last year only fined over 700 million VND, in the first 10 months of this year, 244 vessels were fined with a total amount of 4.02 billion VND; controlling vessels entering and leaving ports more strictly and controlling aquatic product output through ports from 10% to over 40%.
Based on the opinions of ministries, localities, fisheries associations and fishing associations, the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged the efforts of Nghe An in setting a separate deadline for handling "ghost ships" or so-called ships 3 not earlier than the whole country, but like the provinces, the Deputy Prime Minister noted the solutions to increase the rate of monitoring the output of aquatic products exploited through ports and controlling fishing vessels entering and leaving ports because this is the solution to ensure food hygiene and safety and to implement the most certain traceability of origin. In addition, the Deputy Prime Minister also requested ministries, branches, sectors and localities to focus on implementing a number of key and urgent tasks and solutions.
In particular, thoroughly grasp, assign, clarify responsibilities and seriously organize and implement, achieving results the contents and tasks of Directive No. 32-CT/TW of the Secretariat, Resolution No. 52/NQ-CP of the Government and the directions of the Prime Minister; identify this as an important, urgent task, of long-term significance for the sustainable development of the fisheries sector at their agencies and units. Mobilize the political system to take part. The Deputy Prime Minister also requested localities to urgently complete the task of managing the fleet, thoroughly handling the "3 no" fishing vessels, enhancing the role of functional forces and local authorities in closely monitoring and controlling fishing vessel activities at sea and at ports.
In the coming time, it is necessary to organize a review, deploy a drastic campaign, seriously and transparently implement to ensure the legality in the work of tracing the origin of exploited aquatic products. Continue to launch peak campaigns of patrolling, inspecting, controlling, resolutely enforcing the law, handling IUU fishing acts, determined to remove the yellow card in 2024./.