The Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Haja Hafsatu Kabbah on Tuesday revealed that the 22 Taiwanese crew members who were caught in the waters of Sierra Leone about a month ago, have been fined the sum of two million six hundred thousand US Dollars. She said each crew member was fined a hundred thousand dollars.
She made this statement in a press conference at the Ministry of Information and Communication Conference Hall at Youyi building in Freetown. She said the country was generating only pittance from its fishes.
“The fisheries sector currently generates low revenue due to over exploitation and depletion caused by illegal fishing. Poor infrastructure for industrial fishing, lack of a centralized harbor and high wave of poaching are seriously destroying the country’s fisheries resources” she said. Adopting responsible fishing practices would add to the sustainable development of fisheries and contribute to poverty reduction in the country she noted.
The Minister pointed out that Sierra Leone’s mangrove lands have been badly depleted and that according to her this “affects the production of shrimps and other mangrove resources.”
The Minister said it was her ministry’s responsibility to establish what she described as the biological and economic status of the fishes and to increase the contribution of fish resources to the national economy.
She said the country had paid too much attention to the 1994 Fisheries Act with less attention on modern initiatives that would bolster the fishing industry in the country.
Mohamed Sesay is the Acting Director of Fisheries and Marine Resources. He said the country was losing more fishing resources because of what he referred to as “off-shore fishing.”
He said it was important that fishermen gave small fishes the chance to grow.
He said the exploitation of small fishes has resulted in the reduction of fish supply in the country’s markets.
By Abdul Samba Brima
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