The Performance Review: A Waste of Time & Money

Two months have passed since the Department issued individual letters to right holders telling them that no decision was taken with respect to the performance-related data submitted in 2010.

In addition to the "no decision" refrain, the Department produced a series of, frankly, useless data drawing even more useless conclusions such as "It was found that in the Hake Deep Sea Trawl sector, 44% of Right Holders own more than 50% of shares in a vessel; 26% of Right Holders own less than 50% of shares in a vessel; and 30% of Right Holders own no share in a vessel or provided no information in response to the question in their RFI."

Huhh! What is the point of this? How does any of the data "analysis" provided relate to the meeting of sector policy objectives?

For example, have by-catch levels been reduced and what are the average ratios of hake to bycatch takes? What is the average age of trawl vessels (noting that the Policy referred to the need to recapitalise the aging trawl fleet)? What about job numbers and how has the global economic downturn affected the fishery? And what about understanding fisheries trade. For example, what percentage of the TAC is exported (and at what value and in what forms); what percentage is sold domestically (and what value and in what forms) and to which states and regions do we export our fish?

Feike had stated that the performance review process was a failure to start with as the department simply did not appreciate that the purpose of the process was to monitor and evaluate each fishery's performance against the objectives of the respective fishery policies. Afterall what is the purpose of setting policy objectives when you do not intend to measure and monitor meeting of these objectives?

So, we now have a process that cost in the region of R9 million; is hopelessly outdated as the data dates back to 2009; does not contain any decisions (as the department knows that if these were administrative decisions, it would be reviewable by a court of law); and more importantly does not contain any relevant or useful data analysis of the socio-economic and biological state of our major commercial fisheries.