Navy Being Equipped(Front Page) August 26, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
THE Chief Director of the Ministry of Fisheries, Mr Emmanuel Mensah Quaye, has explained that government is in the process of equipping the Ghana Navy to police the country’s territorial waters.
Responding to public concerns about the inability of the Ghana Navy to check pair trawling in an interview with the Daily Graphic, he said “Cabinet had agreed to acquire six ships for the Ghana Navy to enable it to patrol the country’s territorial waters”.
Mr Quaye said the difficulty now was because the money could not be raised for the purchase of the ships and it was, therefore, agreed to buy two at a time.
He discounted claims that pair trawling was responsible for the low catch by fishermen in recent times, citing unorthodox methods of fishing, the continued use of wooden vessels and the refusal of fishermen to observe a period as lean season.
Mr Quaye announced plans by the ministry to help modernise fishing methods in the country by assisting local fishermen to develop fibreglass canoes as against the wooden vessels they now used. Consequently, he said, a company from India, Fibroplast, had expressed interest in the building of the fibreglass canoes.
He said this had become necessary because the wooden canoes that the fishermen currently used had effects on the performance of the industry and the environment.
Explaining further the decision of the ministry to allow pair trawling, Mr Quaye said the policy was for experimental purposes.
He said in view of this, three companies were licensed to undertake this experiment, the result of which would be fed into the fisheries policy of the country.
The Chief Director said that the results which came up during the period of experimentation provoked protests from the local fishermen who complained that they were not making any catch, since the sea bed was being swept by those engaged in pair trawling.
Consequently, he said the ministry placed a ban on pair trawling somewhere last year.
He said the three companies that were licensed to undertake the pair trawling then approached the ministry that based on the licence issued to them, they contracted loans from their banks to do that and would be grateful if they could be allowed to redeem it.
Mr Quaye said the ministry then lifted the ban to allow these three licensed companies to wind up by the end of the year.
He debunked the notion that the local fishermen were not harvesting fish and said the real problem was how to get consumers to patronise their catch.
He said the ministry had had complaints from the Association of Fish Dealers that their catches were not being purchased.
Mr Quaye said pair trawling was against the laws of the country but the ministry decided to experiment it and the result fed into the fisheries policy.
He said pair trawling had created a lot of problems for the ministry and that at the end of this year, it would be banned completely.
He said among the problems were the tussle between the local fishermen and those engaged in pair trawling, as well as those engaged in inshore vessel operations who were also accused of using light and dynamites, which was proscribed by the Fisheries Act 265 of 2002.
Mr Quaye said among the reasons why the local fishermen were not making good harvests were the wooden canoes they used and the practice where they fished throughout the year.
He said in Europe there was a lean season during which they allowed the fishes in the sea to grow and called for days in Ghana when fishing would not be allowed.
Following the complaints of unorthodox fishing methods, Mr Quaye said the ministry had tasked the fishermen to monitor and report any trawler they found engaged in illegal activities but no such official report had been made.
Mr Quaye further pointed out that it was not only foreign companies that engaged in pair trawling but local ones as well.

He said among the effects were that the fishermen depleted the forest when they logged woods for the building of their canoes.
Mr Quaye said the canoes used by the fishermen had engines that were not strong enough to propel them far.
He said the ministry had arranged with the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) to support the new drive.