I POLL

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Today’s issue concerns the fisheries sector and the problems that Maltese fishermen have been facing with their foreign counterparts. We asked a former Labour government minister to voice his opinion on the matter.

Fishing for answers

By Noel Farrugia

The tuna and ‘lampuki’ wars are the epitome of the government’s lack of interest in the fisheries sector. For the past three years the sector has not been taken seriously.

At present, the government is trying to negotiate a 25-mile conservation zone around the islands with the European Union in a bid to protect Maltese fishermen.

However, the government is not credible in its claim because while it says that it wants to protect local fishermen, it allows foreign fishermen to use purse seine nets within the conservation zone.

Furthermore, I ask how can a conservation zone be created when the Planning Authority approved a tuna penning farm merely two miles away from the coast?

Such a penning farm has a negative impact on the natural environment, especially in the sensitive breeding areas close to shore.

During my brief stint in office I had spearheaded the discussion within the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean to ban tuna spotter planes during the months of June, July and August. I had also pressed for a ban on the use of purse seine nets within the 25-mile conservation zone.

The Labour government had adopted this policy to protect the livelihood of Maltese fishermen and to conserve protected species such as turtles and dolphins.

However, the Nationalist government abandoned these discussions. In addition it has not protested with the GFCM on the increasingly abusive use of drift nets in the Mediterranean, which contribute to the depletion of fish stocks.

All this goes to show that government has no interest in the sector and matters took a turn for the worse during the so-called tuna war with the Italian fishermen and more recently the ‘lampuki’ war with Tunisian fishermen.

If the government truly had a grip on things and had adopted a hands-on approach it would have had more weight in these two crises. But the attitude has been very lax and the fisheries sector, similar to the farming one, has been abandoned.

On the contrary, the Nationalist government is more interested in lying to the people about the Labour party’s foreign policy.

The government is wasting time trying to convince people that the ‘Svizzera fil-Mediterran’ concept does not exist. This, when it knows full well that there are about 38 countries around the world, including the United States, that practise a protective fisheries policy similar to the one advocated by the Labour Party.

Mr Farrugia is the Labour Party’s spokesperson on Agriculture and Fisheries.