On September 8, information from Khanh Hoa Provincial People's Committee said that implementing actions to overcome the EC's recommendations after the 5th inspection on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the locality has just issued a plan to focus on handling existing problems. In which, handling existing problems in fishing fleet management, port entry and exit control, journey monitoring, traceability and handling of violations.
By the end of September 15, functional agencies must focus on overcoming existing issues related to VNFishbase, VMS, eCDT data, violation records and high-risk ship groups.
Ships that do not meet operating conditions must be listed, their anchoring locations determined and staff assigned to monitor, not allowing them to leave port to participate in exploitation.
The province requires 100% control of fishing vessels entering and leaving ports, leaving and entering ports; organize 24/7 VMS duty to promptly verify and handle cases of connection loss, exceeding boundaries or equipment intervention.
Notably, fishing vessels losing connection to the vessel monitoring device (VMS) for more than 10 days, vessels exceeding the boundary and high-risk vessels will be managed and monitored separately.
For the eCDT system, 100% of fishing vessels from 6m or more entering and leaving ports, leaving and entering ports must be recorded.
Ships from 12m or more must carry out electronic exploitation logs. Material confirmation and origin certification are only carried out when the data is complete and valid.
The province sets a goal to review and match registration data, inspection, licenses, VMS, port entry and exit, population data and eCDT.
At the same time, clean up and standardize VNFishbase data and classify the entire fleet by length, legal status, and level of risk.
Do not allow Khanh Hoa fishing boats to violate foreign waters; establish records to monitor high-risk fishing boats and fishermen and handle IUU backlog cases from 2024. Records showing signs of crime are transferred to investigating agencies according to regulations.
Over the past time, Khanh Hoa has handled a number of cases according to the recommendations of the EC Inspection Team. At T&H Nha Trang Co., Ltd., the People's Court of Region 1 held a first-instance trial for the case of "Forging documents of agencies and organizations; using fake documents of agencies and organizations", and confiscated and paid to the State budget 400 million VND of illegal profits.
At Thinh Hung Co., Ltd., the People's Court of Region 2 also held a similar first-instance trial, and confiscated and contributed 1.4 billion VND to the State budget, which is the profit earned from the export of 12 violating shipments.
For nearly 500 fishing vessels that do not meet operating conditions, the Department of Agriculture and Environment updates the list weekly and sends it to the commune-level People's Committee and functional forces for management and supervision.
Khanh Hoa also implements livelihood transformation policies for fishermen, including supporting vocational conversion, discarding fishing vessels and supporting VMS equipment subscription fees, towards sustainable development of the seafood industry and contributing to the whole country to soon remove the EC's "Yellow Card" warning.
