Fishing sector's under-transformation creates opportunities

Tina Joemat-Petterssen (Image: GCIS)

His wife has always been the woman left behind supporting their family by working a back-breaking job, packing fish or, if lucky to learn the skill, processing it in the local factory in which most of the community works.

And the cycle is repeated when their children take over from the parents as the vicious circle of poverty continues.

But the government, through policy change, is slowly loading the scales in the current generation's favour.

By empowering the youth to change the face of that village and equipping them with tools to run the local economy, the government is breaking that cycle.

Since its launch in 2009, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) has been pegged by government as one of the key departments to redress the situation.

The fisheries sector alone contributes an estimated R6bn to the South African economy, with its commercial sector employing about 27,000 people and contributing about 0.5% to the GDP.

Quotas reserved for youth

The department intends to ring-fence a certain percentage of fishing rights allocation quotas towards youth-owned companies. And by the end of 2014, we plan to support more than the current five fish farms that are enjoying the government's helping hand

Significant progress in transforming the agriculture and fishing industries in South Africa has been made and this includes changes in policy that have contributed in providing opportunities for some of our disadvantaged communities.

The government's aim is to transform the fishing industry by making it possible for small-scale fishermen, who were excluded by apartheid laws and policies, to take part in the commercial side of the fishing industry.

This will boost the economies of the often-poor areas they come from. This includes non-coastal communities that traditionally do not take part in the fishing sector.

Subsistence fishing communities traditionally included net-making, boat building and putting together bait for additional income and creation of more employment opportunities.

As government, we support the creation of permanent and seasonal employment over contract employment and encourage the training of workers through learnership programmes.

Subsistence fishing

Industry research has shown that communities in the coastal regions of Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape make up the bulk of the country's rural subsistence fishermen.

The law, in terms of the recently published General Policy on the Allocation and Management of Fishing Rights and the Fishery Specific Policies, is promoting wider access to the subsistence fishermen.

In Western Cape, a coastal province, which research has shown to have the highest concentration of subsistence fishermen in its urban and peri-urban areas, fisheries account for about 2% of the GDP.

Government hopes that the amending of sections that include harvesting of commercially viable fish species, including hake hand-line species, KwaZulu-Natal prawn trawl, oyster, squid, and traditional line-fish, would replicate and even surpass the Western Cape.

While the government has enshrined the right to access to sufficient food and water in SA's Constitution, recent reports have revealed that about 12m South Africans have insufficient access to food.

To make sure all South Africans have access to food, our laws have put the promotion of efficient production and handling of food fibre and timber firmly on the department's agenda.

This includes, for example, our rights allocation policies which are aimed at maintaining an ecofriendly system that makes it possible to manage scarce or depleted fish species and other marine life.

We hope the efforts that the government is making to help fishing communities will be met with an equal amount of enthusiasm to change this sector to one that promotes the inclusion of women, youth and disabled people and their encouragement to take leadership roles.

Source: Sowetan via I-Net Bridge