Bình Định is taking necessary measures to remove “yellow card” imposed by European Commission (EC), warning illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities.
Local fishing boats are required to obtain certificates of registration. Provincial Fisheries Industry teams up with local authorities to review design document, supervise the building, improvement and repairing of fishing boats at least 90CV. All boats are technically managed and checked for safety in terms ofdesign, implementation and operation of boat’s body, machine, and tools. These are for the effort of removing “yellow card” warning from EC.
Deputy Head of Sub-Department of Fisheries (under Department of Agriculture and Rural Development) Trần Văn Vinh says: “Registration is paid special attention. We carefully supervise the building, improvement, and annual extensionunder regulations so that 100% boats are well-equipped before being put into operation. Machines are verified for quality when being installed or replaced to reduce incidents or accidents on the sea”.
Besides, boats are not granted registration for drift-net fishing. Sold or transferred boats must be reviewed and managed to prevent boats registered in Bình Định but owned but outsiders from going fishing in foreign territorial water area. The province’s number of fishing boats should be stabilized according to plan to 2020 and vision to 2030.
According to provincial Sub-department of Fisheries, there are 6,153 registered boats with 4,164 ones having registration and exploitation license (representing 67.7%), and 1,989 ones being late for registration and exploitation license (representing 32.3%).
In spite of good results in registration, boat owners encounter difficulties in being granted, re-granted, and extended their seafood exploitation licenses, getting approval for boat building or improvement (under Fisheries Law 2017 granting seafood exploitation licenses in accordance with fixed quota). However, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has not distributed quota and given detailed instruction for implementation.
“We have proposed provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) and People’s Committee to submit an official document to MARD so that an instruction will be issued for implementation. We already submitted to DARD and People’s Committee a project of setting up a Boat Registration Center (directly under Sub-department of Agriculture and Rural Development)in order to specialize the registration and commensurate to the development and modernization of fishing boats in the province”, said Vinh.
VFM
