Six years after Vietnam’s fisheries were given a “yellow card” warning by the European Commission (EC) for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, Vietnam has made progress, which has been recognized and highly appreciated by the EC. However, there are still four recommendations that 28 coastal provinces and cities must complete before the important “examination” in October.
That is to complete the legal framework; strengthen the management of fishing vessels; control the traceability of exploited aquatic products and handle fishing vessels violating in foreign waters. In addition to the first content that has been completed, localities are speeding up and racing because it is impossible to remove the "yellow card" this time, Vietnam will have to wait about 3 more years to welcome the next inspection team.
Lesson 1: Monitoring the fleet from shore to the open sea
At the meetings of the Provincial Steering Committee for Combating IUU Fishing held since the beginning of the year, the issue of how to closely monitor the fleet has always been hotly discussed by provincial leaders, members of the steering committee, and relevant departments and branches. This is also one of the four recommendations that the EC warned about during the 4th Inspection. If the fleet cannot be monitored, how can people and fishing output be monitored?
Declaring war on the "3 no" ships
Being one of the provinces with the largest number of "3 no" vessels (unregistered, uninspected and unlicensed fishing vessels) in the country with more than 2,500, it has caused direct difficulties in controlling and handling violations in fishing. However, with great efforts, Binh Thuan is the pioneer province in completing the temporary registration of a large number of "3 no" vessels and is carrying out official registration according to Circular 06/2024/TT-BNNPTNT (Circular 06) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. "The Chairmen of the People's Committees of districts and towns will be responsible if there are more "3 no" fishing vessels after May 6 and require the entire political system to concentrate on the peak period to complete the registration of "3 no" vessels before September 15. Those are the drastic instructions of Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Nguyen Hong Hai at the meetings of the Provincial Steering Committee for Combating IUU Fishing that have taken place continuously in recent months.
Since 2023, the Provincial People's Committee has directed the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and the People's Committees of districts and cities to review, count and report the number of fishing vessels in the area. However, after each review, the number of unregistered and uninspected fishing vessels has increased in the localities, continuously fluctuating, causing difficulties in managing and monitoring fishing vessel activities, as well as greatly affecting the province's efforts in implementing the EC's recommendations on combating IUU fishing.
Explaining the reason, Mr. Huynh Quang Huy - Head of the Fisheries Sub-Department said that it was mainly due to people leaving the locality to work far away, exploiting seafood outside the province for a long time, so they did not declare in time; buying, selling, giving away, and not transferring ownership. There were also many cases where some shipbuilding and conversion facilities did not have a business license, did not have enough operating conditions, secretly built new ships, bought ships from outside the province to convert to go fishing directly or resell to others. Therefore, these fishing vessels did not have enough documents to declare before the registration as prescribed and did not fully meet the components of the fishing vessel registration dossier according to Circular 06.
"The Chairmen of the People's Committees of districts and towns will be responsible if there are more "3 no" fishing boats after May 6."
Vice Chairman of Provincial People's Committee Nguyen Hong Hai
Based on the above facts, the People's Committee of Binh Thuan province requested the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to direct the Fisheries Sub-Department to send the list of "3 no" fishing vessels that have been announced to the People's Committees at the district and commune levels with fishing vessels for monitoring and management. At the same time, organize the registration of newly built, converted, bought and sold, and donated fishing vessels that have not been registered in the province, fully update fishing vessel data on the national fisheries database VNFishbase, and complete it no later than September 15. Therefore, for more than 2 months now, the Fisheries Sub-Department has established a working group to go to the grassroots level to coordinate with localities to support fishermen in resolving problems, and mobilize fishermen to carry out registration, inspection, and licensing procedures for fisheries in accordance with regulations. In parallel with reviewing and supporting fishermen to complete registration, the leaders of Binh Thuan province also assigned the Provincial Border Guard Command to direct the Border Control Stations/Station at seaports to inspect and control 100% of fishing vessels entering and leaving ports; strictly handle cases of "3 no" fishing vessels arising from illegal construction and trading.
According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, with the strong direction from the provincial leaders, the implementation of registration and inspection of fishing vessels according to Circular 06 has basically kept up with the set progress. Up to now, 2,499/2,531 "3 no" fishing vessels have been temporarily registered (reaching 98.7%) and the number of fishing vessels according to Circular 06 completing procedures for re-registration has reached more than 60% of the total number of fishing vessels announced.
Thus, by September 15, 2024, more than 2,500 "3 no" fishing vessels in the province will have legal records for management, contributing to helping the locality solve one of the major obstacles in overcoming IUU and the road to removing the "yellow card" will be less bumpy.
"Roll call" of high-risk fleet
At a recent online conference to review the National Steering Committee on Combating IUU Fishing, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang requested Binh Thuan province to compile a list of fishing vessels at risk of violating foreign waters within 2 weeks and have a plan to strictly manage this fleet. If later, one of the vessels on this list violates foreign waters, the provincial People's Committee leader must take responsibility.
Based on that direction as well as learning from previous incidents of fishing vessels violating foreign waters, the People's Committee of Binh Thuan province has directed the review, listing and finding specific solutions to manage this group of vessels. With a large fleet of more than 8,450 fishing vessels with a length of 6m or more, of which about 1,400 fishing vessels regularly operate in distant waters (Truong Sa area, DK1, waters bordering other countries), it is very difficult for localities to manage, so there is a high risk of illegal exploitation in foreign waters. After reviewing and screening, the Provincial People's Committee classified vessels into 6 groups with high risk of violating foreign waters. Thereby, 173 fishing vessels were identified with the risk of violating foreign waters (the most are Phu Quy with 85 vessels, La Gi town with 48 vessels, Phan Thiet with 18 vessels, Tuy Phong with 13 vessels...). Checking further, there are 86 fishing vessels under special monitoring and surveillance (Tuy Phong 12; Phan Thiet 13; Ham Thuan Nam 2; La Gi town 22; Ham Tan 1; Phu Quy 36). Through the fishing vessel monitoring system (VMS), this group of vessels will be closely monitored, however, the current situation is that there are still many fishing vessels that lose connection to VMS and the punishment is very limited.
According to the Department of Fisheries, since the beginning of the year, 1 fishing vessel has been detected crossing the maritime boundary (returning to Vietnamese waters). In addition, the whole province has 5,338/619 vessels that have lost connection at sea for more than 6 hours without reporting back to shore, but only 1 case has been fined; 113/113 fishing vessels have lost connection at sea for more than 10 days, but only 14 cases have been fined. Explaining the reason why it is not possible to handle vessels that have lost connection to VMS according to the "cold fine" mechanism, Mr. Le Thanh Binh - Deputy Head of the Department of Fisheries said that currently, there are overlaps between the decrees, there are no specific instructions, so localities are confused and have no basis to "cold fine" fishing vessels that violate the monitoring system. Besides the poor quality of many VMS devices, untimely maintenance and repair, it is also difficult to determine whether the problem is caused by the device or the user when there is a problem.
Regarding this issue, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Nguyen Hong Hai requested the Department of Agriculture to coordinate with the Border Guard, the Department of Justice and related sectors to assess whether the handling and punishment according to the "cold fine" mechanism ensures legal conditions, and if so, it needs to be seriously implemented. In particular, for fishing vessels that lose VMS connection, the Fishing Vessel Monitoring Center needs to have a clear conclusion for each case, the cause of the violation to handle thoroughly, avoiding the situation of blaming the network operator, losing signal, running out of charge...
MINH VAN, PHOTO: N. LAN
Source: https://baobinhthuan.com.vn/chong-khai-thac-iuu-truoc-dot-sat-hach-quan-trong-cuoi-cung-123423.html
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