Why DAFF has not officially published a guideline on "How to screw over artisinal fishers", we don't know. Especially since no one else in the business can so completely frustrate and jeopardise many hundreds of businesses because of incompetent and red-taped "officials".
Take a very recent example in the abalone sector. Here, repeated bungling and utter incompetence by DAFF officials has resulted in the failure to properly implement the allocation of 14 tons of abalone in the False Bay and the eastern part of False Bay (Zone E1). Despite the fact that the abalone industry had provided a complete implementation strategy and timetable which has been accepted by right holders - something the department of fisheries ought to have done but simply could not understand - DAFF officials responded to the industry request with this gem of a response -
"Applications or requests like your one are normally submitted at Customer Service Center where they would get registered and forwarded to the relevant authorities for their consideration. Your motivation for the application for an extension of the season needs to be detailed as this will assist the department in making informed decision. It is also important for you to know that the turnaround time for such applications is 20 working days."So instead of dealing with an urgent request to extend a fishing season (which could be done within a day if there were any competent or non-acting officials around), DAFF officials expose their own extreme incompetence by instead insisting on some pointless bureaucratic procedure of submitting documents to the "customer service center"! Remember, the only reason the extension is being requested in the first place is because of initial DAFF incompetence!
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