Ministry drawing fisheries policy

Accra, July 28, GNA - The Ministry of Fisheries is drawing a new fishing policy that would address gaps in existing policies to ensure the total development of the fishing industry and further ensure food security.

Mr Emmanuel Mensah Quaye, Chief Director of the Ministry of Fisheries, on Friday made this known at a dissemination forum on studies on the impacts of fishery related policies on coastal communities in the country, conducted by FoodSPAN, a nongovernmental organisation (NGO). The study, which covered the Yeji, Prampram and Tema communities, was to critically examine among other things the impact of practices, policies, strategies and actions on fishing communities regarding their right to food.

Mr Quaye said the new fishing policy would ensure that both European Union and other international fishing standards were brought on board to enable Ghana to compete favourably on the global market. He acknowledged the importance of fishing industry in areas of employment as well as its contribution as one of Ghana's most important non-traditional exports, with an annual volume of about 60,000 tonnes representing about 83 million dollars.

"The Fisheries Sector employs three per cent of the national population and takes 20 per cent of the national labour force," he said. Mr Quaye, however, stated that the industry was currently faced with numerous problems, including weak policy framework that did not promote long-term sustainability of fishery resources, over fishing leading to depletion and insufficient surveillance and control measures to counter illegal, unregulated and unprotected fishing.

He said currently there were about 17,000 canoes that shared resources from both marine and inland water bodies and served as permanent sources of livelihood for coastal communities. He said illegal activities of bigger fleets of marine vessels, which used unaccepted nets in fishing was leading to the depletion of marine stocks and called for urgent and radical solutions to revamp the once vibrant fishing sector.

Mr Quaye said the new policy would among other things work at siphoning people in fishing communities into other alternative sources of livelihoods such as aqua-culture and farming crops such as maize, cowpea, groundnuts, pepper and okro.

"The Ministry is currently encouraging fish farmers to form cooperatives through which they could secure loans for large scale aqua-culture as an alternative to the traditional sources of fishing," he said.

Mr David Eli, Field Director of the Technical Services for Community Development (TESCOD), said the study revealed that existing policies were rather tailored to encourage a "ruin and run" exploitation of the resources.

He noted that until recently, Ghana stood out as a fishing country of regional importance, with fish accounting for about 60 per cent of the animal protein intake with a per capita consumption rate of about 25 kilograms.

He said the glory got curtailed as most countries in the West Africa Sub-Region extended their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the mid 1970s and Ghanaian long distant fleets could not afford the high access fees in areas where their operations were hitherto free. Mr Eli noted that as a result of the restrictions most canoes fishermen resorted to various illegal methods of fishing including the use of unapproved fishing nets, mosquito nets and the use of chemicals.

He mentioned some of the key challenges raised by the fishing communities apart from weak policies, as lack of political will, incoherence and bad governance regarding the resources. Mr Eli said the communities were of the view that the development of new policies to restore the marine ecosystem to its potential productive capacity would eradicate poverty and create employment. He said the study also called for improved community participation in resource management, the running of annual stock assessment, freeze the number of industrial trawlers and progressively reduce their numbers.