The National Premix Committee Board has threatened to cut the supply of the product to fishermen on the various landing beaches to ensure full compliance of the one month ban on fishing.
“So we are not going to supply premix to the coastal or the marine sector but we will supply to the lake regions,” the chairman of the National Premix Committee Board Nii Lante Bannerman told the media.
This, according to him would be done in collaboration with the Board’s coordinators along the coastal areas.
“Their [coordinators] are also part of the system to help us monitor that the fishers are not going to sea. Definitely, we are going to ensure that nobody violates the close season ban,” he stated.
The ban, which begins on August 7 is in accordance with Ghana’s fisheries management plan but has been met with fierce resistance from fisher folks despite the country’s fish stocks being critically low.
Speaking to Starr News, the Executive Secretary of the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Association Nii Abio Kyerekuanda IV described the directive as unnecessary and that if allowed to be implemented it would “inflict unnecessary gratuitous hardship on the fishermen and this is what we are going to accept.”
Also, the anti-Human Trafficking NGO, Challenging Heights, warned the ban would cause the majority of affected fishermen to migrate to the Volta Lake as an alternative until the closed season is over, putting pressure on the Volta Lake, and increasing child trafficking prevalence in deprived communities along the coastal communities in the process.
“…Banning fishing in the coastal regions of Ghana will…present fertile grounds for fishermen to be forced to send their children to the Lake Volta for alternative fishing activities in keeping with the history of the trafficking of children to the Lake Volta.
“This opportunity for mass trafficking of children will undoubtedly erode the gains we have made in reducing the incidents of child trafficking in fishing,” cautioned the President of Challenging Heights, James Kofi Annan on July 18.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
