After nearly 4 years of efforts to synchronously deploy solutions to remove yellow tags from the European Commission (EC) for exploited aquatic products [...]
Fierce direction
Implementing the Prime Minister's direction on a number of urgent tasks and solutions to overcome the EC's warning on combating IUU exploitation, recently, the City Party Committee and People's Committee of the City have issued documents guiding and directing departments, branches, branches and localities to thoroughly organize and propagate information to each officer, civil servant, public employee, relevant organizations and individuals to clearly understand, firmly grasp and implement the decision. Comprehensive, synchronous and effective measures to combat IUU exploitation in accordance with the direction of the Government, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, National Steering Committee, City People's Committee, and City Anti-IUU Exploitation Steering Committee.
Along with that, the City People's Committee has assigned the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Hai Phong Border Guard Command, the Police Department and related departments, and the People's Committees of districts, based on assigned functions and tasks, to coordinate with relevant agencies and units to tighten the management of fishing ports, fishing vessels, exploitation activities, and seafood logistics services at sea in accordance with the provisions of the Fisheries Law and related legal documents. official. Thereby, it is possible to promptly detect, prevent, investigate, verify, and strictly handle violations of the law on IUU fishing.
And to achieve the set goals, the work of propaganda and dissemination of the 2017 Fisheries Law, regulations against IUU fishing, seafood food hygiene and safety, environmental protection..., is given special attention by the city. Recently, city and central press agencies have published hundreds of news, articles, and photos; developed and published 27 issues of the column "Sea and island security" broadcast on Hai Phong Radio and Television Station, 12 issues of "Internal Information". Propagating 768 sessions/14,417 vehicles/153,182 people; hung hoardings, posters, slogans, donated 1,204 national flags, 224 DVDs, 3,220 life buoys of all kinds; 36 QY medicine cabinets and bags, 300 law books, 910 handbooks on combating IUU fishing, 200 Law bookst Fisheries 2017. At the same time, number plates were drawn for 266 fishing vessels, instructions to record seafood exploitation logs for 416 fishing vessels, required 146 vehicle owners to directly buy missing life buoys, 35 vehicles to buy cruise lights...
Thanks to good propaganda and advocacy work, 100% of the city's offshore fishing vessel owners have signed a commitment not to violate foreign waters to catch seafood.
Attention is paid to the implementation, installation and monitoring of the journey. As of July this year, the entire city has installed 336/387 (of which 16 fishing vessels are not qualified to operate) devices to monitor fishing vessel journeys, reaching 90.5%.
Pay attention to investing in fisheries infrastructure
Notably, Hai Phong has issued a procedure for handling fishing vessels that lose connection to monitoring equipment with shore stations and fishing vessels that violate fishing zones and routes for implementation; Organize a 24-hour shift to operate the fishing vessel cruise monitoring system according to regulations. Based on this system and the announcement of the Directorate of Fisheries, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development will notify the authorities and People's Committees of districts about fishing vessel owners losing connection. At the same time, coordinate to verify and investigate to clarify the cause of connection loss; Require fishing vessel owners to sign a commitment not to illegally exploit foreign waters and maintain 24/7 connection when operating at sea. Accordingly, since the fishing vessel journey monitoring system came into operation until now, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has issued aIssue 5 notifications for 308 fishing vessels that lost connection to authorities and local authorities for coordination, inspection and verification.
Thanks to the serious and effective implementation of the above solutions, in 2 years 2019 and 2020, in the city, no Vietnamese fishing vessels were detected violating foreign waters to illegally exploit seafood and were arrested and handled by foreign competent forces as well as detected, arrested and handled by Vietnamese competent forces. And up to now, the city has not detected organizations or individuals brokering or sending Hai Phong fishing vessels or fishermen to illegally exploit seafood in foreign waters; No acts of taking advantage of fishing vessels or seafood exploitation for smuggling or organizing illegal border crossings have been detected.
The city has issued fishing licenses to 776/1,147 fishing vessels, reaching 67.6% (of which, the number of fishing vessels over 15m were granted 354/371, reaching 95.4%); issued 298/371 certificates of food safety for fishing vessels, reaching 80.3%. 100% of fishing vessels have been marked and painted with license plates according to regulations.
From 2018 up to now, the city has allocated investment capital of about 300 billion VND for fisheries infrastructure projects to improve capacity to combat IUU fishing. Accordingly, Hai Phong has completed the planning of 1/2000 scale to invest in building a large fishery center in Hai Phong associated with the Gulf of Tonkin fishing grounds; Completed upgrading the wharf surface and renewing the seafood classification house at Ports 1 and 2 of Ngoc Hai Fishing Port; Construction and handover of project items of the Tran Chau Fishing Port Construction Investment Project, announcement of opening the port and putting it into operation and use. At the same time, the city has invested in installing high-speed Internet connection systems, computer systems, monitors, surveillance cameras, office equipment, and office arrangements.o functional units to carry out the work of controlling fishing vessels, confirming the output at the wharf at the fishing port...
Law enforcement at sea, the ability to control and inspect fishing vessels, and confirm landing output at fishing ports and wharves have been tightened by the city's functional forces. Thanks to that, the number of fishing vessels violating legal regulations has decreased over the years. If in 2018, there were 431 vehicle violations, in 2020 it decreased to 293 and in the first 6 months of 2021 there were 34 vehicle violations...
These are very remarkable results of Hai Phong in its efforts to remove the EC's yellow card for Vietnam's exploited seafood...
Khanh Chi
Procedures
