On March 25, Party Central Committee member, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha chaired a direct and online meeting with a number of coastal provinces with large fishing fleets to comment on the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of decrees in the fisheries sector.
In reality, in recent times, many cases of illegal fishing in foreign waters have belonged to the "3 no" fishing vessel group (not registered, not inspected, not licensed), or fishing vessels whose registration has expired, fishing licenses have expired, and even fishing vessels whose registration has been deleted.
Localities all encountered many difficulties in verifying and handling ship owners, captains, fishermen and vehicles in violation.
Chairman of the People's Committee of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province Nguyen Van Tho recommended that fishing vessels that operate at sea for a long time and whose registration and exploitation licenses have expired when the authorities discovered them must have solutions to apply them and bring them to shore for immediate handling without waiting for the vessel to return to shore.
In cases where no violating vessels or boat owners are found for handling but there are still management records, the management agency shall immediately erase the registration within 1 month instead of 1 year as prescribed in current regulations; immediately erase the registration numbers of fishing vessels that have been confirmed by the authorities and have sunk and cannot be towed or towed to shore.
Minister of Agriculture and Environment Do Duc Duy said that it is necessary to clearly identify the responsibilities of network operators in cases of VMS disconnection due to objectivity and force majeure but causing economic damage to fishermen when fishing vessels have to return to shore to fix the problem.
Concluding the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha requested to focus on resolving a number of key issues to remove the IUU yellow card such as: Management of sustainable seafood fishing and exploitation activities according to fisheries, breeding season; focus on completely eliminating "3 no" vessels; review regulations and conditions for private fishing ports to participate in providing services to receive fishing vessels, confirm the origin of seafood from exploitation...
The Deputy Prime Minister also proposed to simplify administrative procedures for fishing vessels arriving at ports based on journey monitoring data and electronic logs, "on the correct journey, at the correct time, and at the correct reported exploitation volume, they will be immediately transferred to the "green channel", automatically confirming the origin of exploited seafood according to the post-inspection process".
For long-term fishing vessels using fishing logistics vessels, it is also necessary to have flexible management measures, not rigid to confirm the origin of exploited seafood brought from logistics vessels to shore.
"Information and data on the operation of fishing vessels, fishing logistics vessels, purchasing units, processing facilities/enterprises... must be managed in a closed chain to ensure the origin of exploited seafood," the Deputy Prime Minister noted.
The Deputy Prime Minister requested to improve technical standards and regulations to ensure the safe and continuous operation of VMS equipment; institutionalize the rights and responsibilities of network operators when damage or disconnection occurs without the fault of fishermen.
