Agriculture ministry under restructuring

RESTRUCTURING OF the fisheries division in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to convert it to an executive agency is on track, and this should be accomplished a year from now, according to permanent secretary, Donovan Stanberry. He said the new facility would be fully staffed and equipped to more effectively manage the fisheries sector, even while admitting that the necessary legislative reform is still pending.

According to Stanberry, many Jamaican fishers are serving long prison sentences in countries that are serious about breaches while, locally, offenders treat even the maximum penalties under the Fisheries Act of 1976 as a joke. "When you charge a man $5,000 for those kinds of breaches, he just tells you, 'Thank you', pays the fine and then comes back next week," Stanberry told the recent ACP Fish II programme network meeting held at The Wyndham Kingston hotel.

The permanent secretary, who delivered the keynote address, declared that as an executive agency, the division would pay more attention to the social aspects of fishing which, in the past, have been overshadowed by emphasis on the technical areas.

"They will go in there and work with the community, build capacity, encourage people to be registered, help them to manage facilities that are provided to them. That's a huge part and, of course, we are going to be very big on enforcement because that is just not something that we take serious at all," Stanberry told the gathering.

Effective enforcement, however, hinges on reformation of the existing laws to provide stronger penalties which, the permanent secretary said, was being addressed as the necessary policy, legislative and institutional framework to effectively manage the fisheries sector properly were being put in place.

"We are promulgating, as we speak, a new fisheries policy that speaks to conservation, that speaks to sustainable management, that speaks to all kind of action and incentives to get people out of the marine environment because we are clearly overfishing there, to developing things like aquaculture," he said.

Admitting that it had been a "very, very long, long process", he said, "I'm happy to say that we now have the draft from the chief parliamentary council and that draft is now being reviewed by the attorney general. It will be heading very, very soon to the legislation committee and thereafter will be laid in the Parliament, and given events in this country pending, that most likely will be in 2012."

This is two years later than the ministry's own deadline for enactment of the new legislation, with the long delay being a matter of concern for former agriculture minister, Dr Christopher Tufton.

"For well over a decade, closer to 15 years, that legislation started in its draft form, influenced by that policy position that was done back in 1995, and to date we are still struggling to table that piece of legislation in Parliament to replace the 1976 legislation. No piece of legislation should have taken that long," he declared at the opening of the Salem fish-vending facility in Runaway Bay, St Ann, in April.

Meanwhile, according to Dr Marc Panton, chief technical director in the ministry, the new legislation is now just out of arm's reach. "We are still battling with it, but it's getting closer and closer. You can just almost reach and just grab it," he said recently.