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Parliament gets update on small-scale fisheries

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About a year after raising concerns about the implementation of the Small-Scale Fishing Policy, subsistence fisher-folk have finally received feedback.

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries provided an official response to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee this week, citing multiple interventions.

Recommendations include calls for amendments to Section 21 and 28 of the policy.

The aim is to provide mechanisms for transfer of rights from commercial to small-scale fisheries, and for the revoking of near-shore fishing rights from those holders who are not exercising their rights.

Chairperson of the Committee, Machwene Rosina Semenya has welcomed the response.

“The policy recognises that the previous fisherman that were excluded in the participation on the allocations of rights. So the courts previously ruled that the department has to create this policy to take care of those traditional fisherman, that they should not be excluded in the process in the new democracy. So the policy was responding to that …”

 

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