Industry gets new trawler rules boost
The government has promised fishing operators new measures to sustain their businesses including allowing them to take over unused trawlers that have been properly registered or sell off their unregistered fishing boats.
The promise was agreed at a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Chatchai Sarikulya and the Fishing Association of Thailand chaired by Mongkol Sookcharoenkana yesterday.
Gen Chatchai said the association has asked for the government’s assistance in dealing with shortage of labour in the fishing industry, a problem which has led many trawlers to be laid up.
The association also complained of a shortage of ATMs which the fishing workers use to obtain their wages. The government issued a regulation on Nov 1 last year requiring employees to pay their workers via ATMs instead of handing out cash to make financial transactions traceable and prevent fraud.
Gen Chatchai said commercial banks will be asked to install more ATMs at fishing ports or in fishing communities.
The meeting also discussed the policy launched by Gen Chatchai during his tenure as agriculture minister which was to promote more fishery farming to reduce the need for open sea fishing.
More fishery farming would lessen exploitation of natural resources. However, Gen Chatchai stressed the need to maintain balance by keeping the legal open-sea fishery operators in business while effectively tackling illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Gen Chatchai said the major issue the government faces is what to do with the more than 1,000 vessels now banned from fishing because they were not registered.
One option was to let owners of unregistered fishing boats buy registered vessels from owners who have given up the fishing business and take over the fishing licence which comes with those boats.
However, if such an option is not workable, the government has set aside a budget to buy the unregistered boats, a measure aimed at curbing overfishing in line with the anti-IUU fishing policy.
Gen Chatchai said the priority now was to try and implement the boat and licence takeover. If that fails, purchasing boats would be a last resort.
However, the deputy premier said the legal aspects of this must be studied to ensure no laws are broken.
On Dec 18 the reform steering panel on national administration headed by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon adopted a number of measures including the government purchase of unregistered fishing boats.
Gen Prawit said this must be done in tandem with the taking over of fishing licences, which would help limit the amount of boats in Thai waters to a manageable level, according to Defence Industry spokesman Kongcheep Tantravanich.
At the meeting an agreement was also reached in principle to establish a fund that would modernise fishing boats and make them easier to trace. Another resolution will see low-interest loans given to fishing operators who are financially affected by the anti-IUU measures.