Thursday 20 February 2014

Free fishing industry from levy, let it grow

From The Citizen Daily, Dar es Salaam
Editorial

The fishing sector faces a number of problems, most of them self inflicted. Overfishing and illegal fishing are the order of the day in the Lake Zone.

Worse still, unscrupulous surveillance officials are directly or indirectly involved in fishing using small-mesh nets, which poses a big threat to the Nile Perch.

In one of his recent audit reports, Controller and Auditor General Ludovick Utouh noted that the amount of immature Nile Perch caught rose from 83,157 tonnes in 2008 to 84,782 tonnes in 2010 in Mwanza, Mara and Kagera regions.

Recent data published by the Tanzania Industrial Fishing and Processors Association indicates that though the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation wants a maximum biomass of 382,500 tons to remain in the Tanzania section of the lake, Nile Perch fishing overshot the limit by 57 per cent in 2012.

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