BFAR hiring law enforcers vs. illegal fishing

The government is hiring over 700 enforcers to combat illegal fishers in the country, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources has said.

 

In the National Symposium on Fisheries held in Quezon City on Monday , Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) announced that the government is hiring 778 new enforcers with plantilla positions, over 100 vessels and fund for fuel to go against illegal fishers.

 

BFAR director Asis Perez said the government had also proposed to raise the maximum penalty for serious fisheries violations to P10 million from a mere P10,000.

 

"There will be enough teeth in the law for violators to feel the pain," Asis was quoted by non-government organization Ocena Philippines in a news release.

 

Oceana vice president Gloria Estenzo Ramos said more than 75 percent of the country's fishing grounds were depleted.

 

Oceana board member Dr. Daniel Pauly, for his part, presented in the symposium results of a global study that indicated world fisheries catch is "much higher than previously thought, and declining much faster than data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests."

 

"The Philippines is no exception, with fish catch actually twice as much as official landing," Pauly said, adding that small-scale fishing data and harvest from reef gleaning and sports fishing are not included in the fisheries catch statistics.

 

The country "urgently needs to rehabilitate its fisheries resources and the statistical system by which catches are monitored," Paul said. Data coming from government agencies are "biased and downward."

 

According to the statement, over 1.3 million small-scale fishers and an estimated eight million people depend on fisheries in the Philippines.

 

The government will launch on Nov. 24 its targeted intervention program for the fisheries sector as part of poverty alleviation measures, Perez said.

 

He said that 41 percent of the population in the fisheries sector was poor due to the "lack of post-harvest facilities such as cold storage, processing of value-added products, and marketing support.  —Kathryn Mae P. Tubadeza/NB, GMA News