The Fisheries Law in 2017 will take effect from January 1, 2019. It has many new and advanced contents compared to the Fisheries Law in 2013. The law basically meets requirements of fisheries development in the new situation of our country in general and Quang Binh in particular.
In order to effectively implement the Fisheries Law in 2017, the Provincial People's Committee issued the Plan No. 832 / KH-UBND dated May 31, 2018 on the assignment of specific tasks of the implementation of the Law to all departments, sectors, organizations and local authorities.
On that basis, all organizations and localities have focused on performing their given tasks, such as concentrating on propagating and disseminating the Law on Fisheries in 2017 to people and management officials, especially those affected by the Law, such as: ship owners, fishermen, establishments that build new fishing vessels, establishments that farm and process aquatic product, establishments that provide fishery logistic service, officials involved in fisheries management, reviewing completely all objects affected by the Law. For examples, number of fishing vessels, number of establishments building new fishing vessels, reserves of aquatic resources, and etc.
In the beginning, the province authority has collaborated with the Directorate of Fisheries to develop a database about fisheries such as fishing vessels, integrating information about fishing vessel registration number, ship owners, size, occupation, and etc.
Quang Binh strictly controls fisheries activities and promote all the works of inspection, examination and handling all violations of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing exploitation.
Thanks to synchronous, comprehensive and effective implementation of solutions, Quang Binh has well prepared for implementation. The province is expected to implement the Fisheries Law in 2017 timely and effectively, assisting the province's fisheries sector in developing more sustainably, modernly and greatly.
Together with this, Quang Binh province has made many efforts to eliminate the “yellow card” that was issued by the European Commission in the past year. After 1 year of implementation, Quang Binh has basically achieved some optimistic results. First of all, most people in the province, especially fishermen and fisheries management officials, have made changes in their awareness, knowledge regarding illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices, the disadvantage of the European Commission's “yellow card” and anti-IUU exploitation activities by authorities.
The above results are attributable to the synchronous and comprehensive implementation and propaganda with the participation of sectors and organizations from provincial to district and commune levels in various forms that designed to make it suitable to each group of applicant; for instance, direct propaganda through conferences, signing commitments, encouraging people to take part in the implementation, distributing flyers, leaflets, legal instruction booklet, broadcasting and spreading information on local loudspeaker systems.
In addition, the Department of Fisheries of Quang Binh province also promotes strict control of fishing vessels, signing and implementing the Coordination Regulations 927 / QCPH dated May 2nd 2018 on anti-IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) regulations between Department of Agriculture and Rural Development , The Executive Committee of the Provincial Border Guard and People's Committees of all coastal districts, cities, and district-level towns to enhance the capability and effectiveness of IUU exploitation prevention, establish a representative office of fishery inspection and audit to look over and control ship to enter and leave ports, and firmly and substantially implement the work of confirmation and giving certification of origin of exploited aquatic products without violating IUU and following regulations.
At present, the Coast Station of the Quang Binh Department of Fisheries is upgrading its system to automatically monitor the fishing vessel’s journey every 2 hours to ensure accurately information according to European Commission’s recommendations; reviewing and combining all information of fishing vessels, including information on ship owners, ship’s sizes, exploitation occupations, registration expiry date; and reporting to the Directorate of Fisheries to update all mentioned information into the system of database about nationwide fisheries.
Subsequently, the Coast Station strengthens their inspection and handling all of violations of IUU exploitation in the whole province. Since the beginning of 2018 until now, relevant organizations, agencies and departments in the province have organized more than 50 inspections, discovered and handled 121 cases of violation, collected fines of 741 million VND, confiscated 20 sets of electric jacks.
The provincial People's Committee of Quang Binh Province has resolved resolutely to cut all financial support under Decision 48/2010 / QD-TTg for all IUU violations case. The total amount of support that was not subsidized is VND 275 million. At the same time, the committee did request all violated ship owners to sign a commitment not to repeat the offense. Thanks to the implementation of strict control activities, the situation of IUU exploitation and circumstances seiner fishing vessel from other provinces that exploit illegally in the coastal areas of Quang Binh province has decreased.
In the coming time, the province is going to take solutions to improve the effectiveness of anti-IUU fishing in the province, contributing to get rid of the warning “yellow card” to develop fisheries industry “sustainably”. Even though the implementation achieves some satisfactory results, the status of violation of IUU exploitation has not been thoroughly prevented in actual fact. In upcoming time, the provincial People's Committee will have been instructing all relevant sectors and local’s authorities at all levels to continue promoting comprehensively and completely all the assigned tasks and given solutions in the fight against IUU exploitation and consider this job as an important task of sectors, organizations and localities.
In particular, the propaganda and dissemination work should be strengthened to raise up legal awareness about fisheries exploitation and anti - IUU exploitation for all people; fishing activities should be controlled strictly; the work of inspection, examination should be promoted; and all the case of violations of IUU exploitation should be handled firmly; foreign fishing vessels that exploit illegally in international waters should be prevented, minimized and eliminated; fisheries development policies should be well implement; and regulations on IUU exploitation should be flawlessly applied.
Additionally, in order to strengthen the ability to combat IUU exploitation, the provincial authority has proposed to National ministries and departments to allocate funding to support the province to invest in building new fishing vessel inspection ships with a capacity of over 1,000 CV to serve the work of inspection, control and participation in rescue and salvage in the ocean. The authority also suggests to have funds to build up a new storm shelters for fishing vessels in the North of Gianh river area which have been approved implementing by the Government.
Thien Binh