Meeting of the National Steering Committee on combating illegal fishing

On December 13, at the headquarters of the People's Committee of Ba Ria Vung Tau province, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang chaired the 8th online meeting of the National Steering Committee on Combating Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUU) with 28 coastal provinces and cities. Attending at the provincial bridge point was comrade Phan Tan Canh, member of the Provincial Party Committee, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development , through the 4th field inspection, the European Commission (EC) Inspection Delegation acknowledged and highly appreciated Vietnam's progress in combating IUU fishing in recent times. However, the actual implementation results in localities today still have many limitations, especially the monitoring, control, supervision of fishing vessel activities and the punishment of IUU fishing violations are not strict; there is no unity in the coordination mechanism, confirming the origin of exploited aquatic products. Loss of connection to monitoring the journey often occurs, information on fishing logs still has many errors, not ensuring reliability for tracing the origin...

Comrade Phan Tan Canh, member of the Provincial Party Committee, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee attended at the provincial bridge point.

The meeting heard leaders of several central and local ministries and branches report on the results of coordination in collecting and providing information on fishing vessels detained and handled by foreign countries; the process of investigating and handling brokerage lines and connections that bring Vietnamese fishing vessels to illegally exploit foreign waters; and the work of handling cases of disconnection of monitoring equipment at sea. At the same time, solutions to combat IUU fishing were proposed in the coming time.

Concluding the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang said that the fight against IUU fishing still exists, with limitations that do not meet the EC's criteria. If this situation continues, the risk of being raised to a "Red Card" warning is very high. The Deputy Prime Minister requested the heads of central and local agencies to continue to promote a sense of responsibility, consider this a priority and urgent task, and be resolute in leadership and direction. In particular, strengthen propaganda work, review and grasp the situation, promptly prevent and strictly handle violations in the process of implementing the EC's recommendations; organize exploitation and effectively use the vessel monitoring system to prevent and end the situation of fishing vessels illegally fishing at sea. Strictly control the activities of fishing vessels entering and leaving ports, trace the origin of exploited aquatic products and the output of aquatic products unloaded through ports. Resolutely not allow fishing boats that have not installed voyage monitoring equipment, have not marked fishing boats and have not been granted a license to participate in fishing...

Hong Lam

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