The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism will in due course be identifying ways of exploiting inshore fish and marine resources to alleviate poverty and create jobs in the fishing industry, says Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
In a statement released on Monday by his chief communications official, JP Louw, Van Schalkwyk said a policy for subsistence fishing will be released “within the coming months”.
This, together with other measures, will help put food on the tables of fishermen’s families and allow bona fide fishermen the dignity of remaining inside the law.
He noted that there was a realisation at the beginning of the quota-allocation process that it is “simply not possible to give every applicant a quota when the best available science tells us that our fish stocks cannot sustain these levels and indeed many of our line-fish stocks are in a critical state”.
“There are simply too many people demanding quotas and too little fish to allocate. In the case of West Coast rock lobster, for example, only one out of five applicants can be accommodated,” said the minister.
“Furthermore, many applicants who applied for quotas are, in fact, not bona fide and deserving fishermen, and have no just claim for a quota, but have applied in the desperate hope of alleviating their dire economic position.”
He noted that many fishermen see fishing rights as “a last hope”. This is because they find employment in the fishing season. The result is, unlike other sectors such as mining and manufacturing, that fishermen are generally not compensated with pension schemes, medical-aid cover or other basic and sound employment conditions.
Often fishing rights are seen as a route to make up for this and it is time for this to be addressed.
“I will be instructing the department to start long-overdue discussions with fishermen in our coastal villages, unions and our biggest fishing companies to find ways of reducing the casual nature of employment in the sector and to also begin to meet the other basic social costs incurred by almost every other employer in other economic sectors.”
Van Schalkwyk, the former New National Party leader who joined the ruling African National Congress last year, said: “We remain very open to any new ideas that will practically and sustainably help us to address the plight of our poorest fishing communities.
“What we need now is the coming together of minds on how best to address this challenge.” — I-Net Bridge