A Vietnamese fishing boat (Photo: VNA)
Ben Tre (VNA) – The number of fishing vessels of the Mekong Deltaprovince of Ben Tre committing illegal fishingin foreign waters in the first six months of 2021 fell 52.4percent year-on-year, according to the provincial steering committeefor illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing prevention(Steering Committee 689).
The local authorities have punished eight out of 12 owners of fishing vessels violatingforeign waters in accordance with Decree 42/2019/ND-CP on stipulating penaltiesfor administrative violations in the fisheries sector with a total fine of 6.6billion VND (over 286,000 USD).
In the coming time, the province will continue to drastically implement solutionsto combat IUU fishing, in order to remove the European Commission (EC)’s yellowcard warning.
Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Nguyen Minh Canh, who isalso head of Steering Committee 689, said specialattention will be paid to strengthening supervision over fishing vessels operatingoffshore through monitoring systems, and resolutely sanctioning fishing boats which violate regulations on fishing boundaries and those with no cruisemonitoring devices.
The local authorities will also focus on promoting patrollingactivities and closely inspecting ships entering and leaving ports.
Communication campaigns have been promoted in coastal localities to raisepublic awareness of IUU fishing prevention, he said.
According to Doan Van Danh, Director of the provincial Department ofAgriculture and Rural Development, the observance of legal regulations by offshore fishing vessel owners has witnessed positive changes.
The dissemination of laws, especially the Law on Fisheries 2017 and relateddocuments, have been implemented regularly, contributing to raising theawareness of fishing ships’ owners, he said./.
