‘New deep-sea fishing licensing policy to hit poor fishermen hard’

Rejecting the Deep Sea Fishing Licensing Policy 2018, devised and approved by the federal government recently, an organisation working to protect the fishermen’s rights has said the policy will be a blow to the collapsing fisheries in the country.

The federal government has dismissed concerns of the governments of Sindh and Balochistan and has obtained powers for issuing deep-sea fishing licences under the new policy in a bid to replenish depleted seafood stocks.

Under the new rules, the provinces will be required to apply for licences from the central government. In his comments, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum chief Muhammad Ali Shah said on Tuesday that the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s recent fish stock assessment conducted with the support of the federal government had already painted a very dismal picture of the country’s marine fish stock.

According to that the assessment report, more than 72 per cent of the fish stock in coastal areas of Pakistan has declined. In this scenario, Shah said, the policy would be a final blow to the collapsing fisheries in Pakistan. He said fishermen who had already been facing subsistence issues would have to face the wrath of the new policy.

Shah said the federal governments might have the authority to regulate deep-sea fishing, i.e. beyond 12 nautical miles from the baseline to the exclusive economic zone stretching over 200 nautical miles across the coastline; however, fishing was a provincial subject and the provinces had thus now authority to regulate fisheries in sea or in freshwater bodies. Further, he said, this may be assessed from the fact that at the movement the federal government had no any fisheries ministry to regulate fisheries.

In the past, he said, the federal government had announced such a policy which was rejected by fishermen. Similarly, the existing policy had been rejected by small-scale fishermen. He deplored that instead of promoting small-scale fisheries in light of the FAO guidelines on small-scale fisheries which Pakistan was a party to, the government was promoting industrial fishing.

Industrial fishing through the deep-sea trawlers policy would be detrimental to the livelihoods of small-scale fishermen. He also said that if this policy was not taken back, fishermen would conduct a series of peaceful protests.