May 15 To June 15 'Closed Season' Was In Consultation With Fishermen - Afoley Quaye
The Minister of Fisheries, Hon. Elizabeth Afoley Quaye has debunked the assertion making waves that her Ministry does not actually engage with the Fishermen in decision making involving their work.
According to her, due do such impression being created in the public, every meeting with the fishermen is recorded in order to prevent the situation where some fishermen will go out to say “we were not properly engaged with”.
Announcing the new dates at a press briefing at the Ministry of Information on Wednesday, the Minister of Fisheries, Hon. Elizabeth Afoley Quaye said the May 15 to June 15 dates chosen as "closed season" for fishing were agreed upon after extensive consultation and stakeholder engagements.
“For now what we do is that every meeting we hold with the Fishermen is recorded because we don’t want a situation where some fishermen will go out to say that ‘we were not properly engaged with’ so we have minutes of our meetings, we have video recordings of our meetings,” she stated.
“The meeting was heavily attended by Paramount Chiefs: the Oguaa Manhene Nana Kwesi Artrhur chaired the function; Nana Kwabena Nketia was there, the Awomefia Torgbui Sri of Anlo was there . . . a lot of Paramount Chiefs were there and the Chief of Tema in whose jurisdiction this meeting took place was also there. We had the Parliamentary Select Committee on Agric and Cocoa Affairs attending and we had the MP for Tema East also there. We had a lot of stakeholders, MMDCEs were also there in their numbers and so we engage properly with the Fishermen and then they came out with the dates that they thought was good for them,” she stressed.
She added that August 1 to September 30, 2019 have been agreed on by industrial trawlers to observe the season and further stated that the Tuna sector had their ‘closed season’ from January 1 to the end of February, 2019.
Dubbed 'closed season', the ban is aimed at saving some species of fishes such as mackerel and anchovies which are going into extinction due to poor fishing practices in the country.
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