A fisheries economist, Prof. Wisdom Akpalu, has bemoaned the lack of prosecution, or, the relaxed prosecution of fishing-related crimes, which he believes are handled with kid gloves, thereby encouraging more people to consider it as a lucrative business area.
He explained that with statistics over the years showing that perpetrators of crimes on the seas are let off the hook, or, never quite given the deserved punishments, it makes it almost acceptable for people to continue to perpetuate illegalities on the seas.
This, he added, has become the case because the offenders of such crimes easily get away from being appropriately reprimanded.
"When people go to catch fish illegally, either by using an illegal method in catching fish or catching fish that they are not supposed to catch, should not be different from any other crime that people commit. If you strongly believe that taking that fish and taking it in a way that destroys the future of the fisheries and going to render a lot of people jobless, then we have to treat it the same way someone who goes to another person’s farm and harvest some plantain and some cocoyam or something. It’s the same,” he said.
Prof. Wisdom Akpalu, who is also the Dean of the School of Research and Graduate Studies at GIMPA, made this known during a presentation at a roundtable discussion on Fisheries Regulation and Enforcement in Ghana at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).
