Agric. Ministry to tighten regulations to prevent unorthodox fishing

Ghana has begun initiating moves to tighten her regulations to prevent unorthodox fishing methods in its territorial waters. Led by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the body mandated to spearhead the activities of agriculture and its related problems in the country, is preparing to re-lay the Fisheries Act 625 before Parliament for amendment.

The amendment being envisaged by the Food and Agriculture Ministry is to give it more powers in curbing the illegal methods used in the fishing industry. Fishermen operating in West African states, especially those along the Gulf of Guinea, have for sometime now been using prohibited fishing methods, including light attraction, fishing with dynamite, DDT, carbide, under-sized mesh nets and unapproved fishing nets, among many others.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture in 1997 introduced a Community-Based Fisheries Management Committee (CBFMC) concept, as a way of directly involving fishing communities at the local level in the management of fisheries resource. The concept came into being during a World Bank- Funded Fisheries Sub-Sector Capacity Building Project.

But the CBFMC, since its introduction has been challenged with inadequate organizational capacity, poor human resource capability, inadequate financial resource, lack of workable document to guide their inner workings and non-gazetting of their by-laws to give backing to their work within the community.

The Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Yaw Effah-Baafi appearing in Parliament on Tuesday to answer questions pertaining to his Ministry, and told the House that the organization and operations of some 200 CBFMCs for the co-management of marine fisheries are ongoing in all the District Assemblies along the marine coast.

According to him, all the District Assemblies along the coast have passed their CBFMCs bye-laws, but only twelve of the bye-laws have so far been gazetted. As part of the methods to deal with the menace, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture have instituted a twenty-two District Fisheries Management Committee (DFMCs), which according to the deputy Minister is still ongoing. The formation of the DFMCs became necessary when the Ministry realized that a body was needed at the District Center to coordinate and take oversight responsibility for all the CBFMCs in the Districts, out of which two DFMCs have been formed and inaugurated in the Central Region of Ghana.

“Efforts are being made to give recognition to the DFMCs as sub-committee of the District Assemblies so as to give them a legal standing and a legislative authority too”, noted the deputy Minister.

As a first step towards the directive, the deputy Minister told The Chronicle that the Government of Ghana is in the process of securing two fishing patrol vessels (speed boats), which he believes will be available early next year (2010) for the monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) division of the fisheries commission, to enable them perform their duties effectively in dealing with unorthodox fishing methods.

The MCS division of the Fisheries Commission is a body responsible for monitoring compliance and enforcement of fisheries regulations at the National level. He again told the paper that plans were far advanced to build the capacities of the CBFMCs to enable them to be well equipped in managing the country's fisheries resources. Source: Stephen Odoi-Larbi - Ghanaian Chronicle