Fishing Right Allocation Process Update: June 2013
On 4 June 2013, the Department of Fisheries provided the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Fisheries with an update on its increasingly ad hoc, chaotic and plainly unlawful rights allocation process. The presentation was led by the department's acting DDG of Fisheries, Mr Desmond Stevens. There were a number of notable highlights during the presentation that simply confirmed that the department's senior managers remain woefully out of touch with reality and ignorant of a concept sometimes referred to in dark corners as the "rule of law". Firstly, there is the bizarre, sudden and inexplicable shift to now include more than 7300 subsistence fishers in the KZN and Eastern Cape provinces under the banner of small-scale commercial fishers and, according to Stevens, they have been identified as the primary potential beneficiaries of the next long term rights allocation process! Where on earth did that come from? The current (unsustainable) number of small scal...