Fishing vessels are at Vam Lang Port in the southen province of Tien Giang. (Phto: VNA) Localfishermen are urged to follow proactive monitoring measures such as installing vesselmonitoring system (VMS) equipment, which is expected to curb violations relating toforeign waters.
The provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has coordinated with relevant agencies and local administrations to popularise legal documents on banned activities and administrativepunishments relating to IUU fishing among fishing vessel owners and captains, in such forms as holding meetings or broadcasting via public loudspeaker systems.
Theprovince also established an inspection team specialising in anti-IUU fishing, while making use of an inter-sectoral coordination mechanism betweendepartments, ministries, branches, and People's Committees of 28 coastalprovinces and cities for information exchange and handling to preventVietnamese vessels from violating regulations.
Wardsand communes with fishing vessels have been required to investigate cases where fishing vessels cut off VMS signals formore than ten days or fishing vessels are suspected of going beyond permittedfishing boundaries, in order to impose strict punishment on violations.
Onthe other hand, fishing vessel owners are encouraged to sign voluntary commitments to not fishing in foreign waters and not violating local and international bans on the exploitationof marine fauna and flora.
Inaddition, the province has implemented support policies for fishermen andprioritised resources for fishing infrastructure.
Accordingto the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, currently,75 vessels in the province have not installed VMS, of which fourvessels were sunk but yet to be deregistered, three vessels have moved toother provinces, and 68 vessels have not gone to sea.
In2022 and the first seven months of 2023, the province did not record any local fishingvessels violating foreign waters./.
VNA
