Staff Writer
Fisheries minister, Albert Kawana maintains his ministry did its utmost best to ensure that everyone was catered for when it allocated the new fishing rights.
“We received 5,176 applications and it was impossible to give everyone quotas but we ensured that different groups were catered for, from the youth, regions, women and war veterans,” the minister said.
“We had to consider broad-based allocation and we absolutely ensured that we catered for all the various groups.”
As part of their submissions, applicants were to be judged on a scorecard system to determine their contribution to socio-economic development. The criteria included broad participation at shareholder level. The groups to be considered included youth, women, people with disabilities, and persons from economically disadvantaged regions, liberation war veterans and worker trusts.
Quizzed on criticism that most of the previous right holders had been awarded rights to the disadvantage of new applicants, he said, “the allocation was based on various considerations, including investment made, onshore processing and the number of people employed.”
“Those companies already employ thousands of employees and we can’t allow them to close down and put all those employees out on the streets.”
He said despite the overwhelming applications received, his ministry had ensured that the allocation process was transparent, with a third party having been engaged to carry out the vetting and selection process and only submitting the final list which was presented to cabinet.
“We are not involved. The whole process was done by the University of Namibia. We had six professors, doctorate holders, and specialists in various fields such as accounts, law, statistics and economics being part of the process and at the end we got the list which we took to cabinet,” he said.
“Those are the people who helped with the assessment process for the applications. Unam still has all that information, not the ministry.
“Those that were unsuccessful will also be informed and told the reasons for the decision. This will be done for transparency. We have asked Unam to keep the information until that process is complete,” Kawana said.
He vowed that his ministry will never contribute to the depletion of the country’s fishing resources amid increased pressure for his ministry to consider more quotas.
“Scientists and the Marine Adversary Council come up with what we can allocate based on studies carried out. So based on their recommendation that is what we allocate, we don’t have more, just what is recommended by the scientists. We cannot increase the quotas if there is no supply,” he said.
“What happened to pilchards will never happen as long as I have the mandate from the appointing authority to lead this ministry. We need to preserve this natural for future generations.”
He, however, questioned employment figures of the Seaflower Pelagic Processing at Walvis Bay after the company announced that it was retrenching 600 fixed-term employees because of reduced quota.
“I was surprised to hear those figures. With the information we have, the company does not employee even close to half of that figure and most of the employees are casual, not permanent as it is being suggested,” the Fisheries minister said.
Seaflower Pelagic Processing is a joint venture between Fishcor and African Selection Fishing Namibia.
The Ministry of Fisheries has allocated 104 fishing rights for various fishery species, 30 of the rights were awarded for hake, 30 for horse mackerel, five for monk, five red crabs, five for rock lobster among other species.
