WE NEED TO DEFEND OUR FISHERMEN (DEC 29, 2009)

FOR the hundreds and thousands of fishermen along the country’s coastline, the arrest and detention of two trawlers for illegally operating in the country’s Inshore Exclusive Zone (IEZ) must have come with some minimum relief.
This is because for several years now local fishermen have been at the mercy of huge industrial trawlers which have been plundering our waters and destroying the fishing nets, equipment and canoes of our poor local canoe fishermen.
Some of the illegal activities of these large vessels include pair trawling, in which they employ massive nets and two vessels running side by side to sweep the sea clean of fish, including fingerlings.
Indeed, the practice had continued to a point where it appeared that the cry of the canoe fishermen for a national intervention to save their trade was an exercise in futility, since no help appeared from anywhere.
To the extent that the local fishing industry was so threatened, pair trawling and the fate of local fishermen in general became a major electoral issue at last year’s polls which brought the National Democratic Congress into power.
In the build-up to those elections, problems relating to fishing were at the fore of the exciting and sometimes acrimonious political campaign during which the NDC promised local Ghanaian fishermen a better deal.
Curiously, the NDC made substantial gains along the coastal towns from Aflao to Axim and some political observers attributed those gains, in large measure, to the promises made to the fishermen.
Against this background, the arrest of the two vessels which, according to a Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Fisheries, Nii Amasah Namoale, was the result of a collaborative effort between the Ghana Navy and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, as well as the Fisheries Management committees in Cape Coast and Moree, is commendable.
In their moments of distress, some of the fishermen had on their own captured video evidence of their ordeal at the hands of the big vessels which, in any case, are barred by law from operating in the IEZ. But to their frustration, even those pieces of documentary evidence yielded nothing.
This time, it has been confirmed that the first trawler, M/V AWOYAA 8, was arrested in the IEZ off Cape Coast upon documentary evidence provided by local fishermen, which indicated that the vessel had destroyed the fishing nets of three canoes operating within the zone.
And the second trawler, M/V ZHONG LU YU 1004, was detained at the Tema Fishing Harbour on the same day on the basis of documentary evidence provided by the Chief Fisherman of Winneba that it had also destroyed the fishing nets of local canoe fishermen in the IEZ off Winneba.
These are but early signs that the ministry, the Navy and other stakeholders are willing and able to act in defence of our poor canoe fishermen to save our dying industry.
It is, however, too early to shout hurrah!