DA hails ‘about-turn’ on MCM move to Pretoria

MARINE and Coastal Management will not be moving lock, stock and barrel to Pretoria – but staff making up its human resources and legal departments will move to the country’s administrative capital.

While the DA hailed this yesterday as an “about-turn” on the part of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries minister Tina Joemat-pettersson, saying it was due to pressure that it had applied, ministerial adviser Rams Mabote strongly disagreed.

“It is absolutely nonsensical for the DA to suggest an about-turn on the part of the minister,” Mabote said.

He was responding to a statement by DA MP and deputy spokesman on agriculture Pieter van Dalen, who suggested Joemat-pettersson had flip-flopped on the issue.

Van Dalen said the minister had told Parliament’s agriculture, forestry and fisheries oversight committee on Tuesday that most of the operation would remain at the coast to manage the country’s marine resources, while some staff would relocate.

The Cape Times reported at the end of last month that Joemat-pettersson had told the same committee that MCM’S “central and national function” would move to Pretoria and “the Western Cape should be treated as a province”.

The mooted move was derided by the DA as misguided, as 80 percent of all commercially caught fish is landed in the Western Cape – more than 1 000km from landlocked Pretoria.

Joemat-pettersson defended her stance by saying that if the “playing fields were levelled” the province would represent far less than the 80 percent claimed.

She claimed that commercial fishing in the Western Cape had been artificially strengthened under apartheid while Kwazulu-natal, the Eastern and Northern Cape had been neglected.

“It is also important to note that the fishing stocks are depleted in the Western Cape and spreading our resources to other parts of the country – including in rivers for aquaculture – will not only see more areas of the country contributing to fishing stocks, but it will also allow more players, specifically small fishing communities participating in this rather lily-white industry,” a statement issued on her behalf by Mabote on March 1 said.

Van Dalen said yesterday the minister had assured the committee on Tuesday there’d be no “total move” and said the DA welcomed this.

But Mabote accused Van Dalen of trying to score political points.

“The minister says exactly the same things… that only corporate services would be considered for the move to Pretoria.”