Poor Fishermen Made to Wait for Free Boats From Indonesian Government
Jakarta. Indonesia's Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry said it will carry on with a boat grant program to provide fishing vessels for struggling fishermen even though it is already way behind its 2017 target.
The ministry’s director general of capture fisheries Sjarief Widjaja said on Tuesday (07/11) that by last year the ministry has already provided 754 fishing boats for poor fishermen across Indonesia.
They comprise 371 three-gross ton vessels, 185 five-gross ton vessels, 120 10-gross ton vessels, 60 20-gross ton vessels and 18 30-gross ton vessels.
But last year, the ministry was only able to build and distribute 58 fishing boats for the poor fishermen.
"We're happy with what we've achieved, despite last year's delays," Sjarief said in a statement.
Wrong Boats?
However, the ministry is now receiving complaints from the fishermen that that boats they were given did not match their specifications.
Agus Suherman, director of ship and fishing equipment at the ministry, said many of the boats remain unused since the fishermen did not like fishing in them.
According to Agus, the fishermen were also complaining that the boats came with not a single fishing equipment on board.
Agus said the ministry will send a monitoring and evaluation team to inspect the boats as soon as possible.
"The team is ready. They will start working in the third week of November," Agus said.
The ministry had targeted to distribute 782 fishing vessels by the end of this year to make up for the delays in 2016.
They comprise 243 under five-gross ton vessels, 384 five-gross ton vessels, 134 10-gross ton vessels, 15 20-gross ton vessels and six 30-gross ton vessels.
So far this year, the ministry has only built and distributed 101 fishing boats.
"We're still confident of meeting the target before December. We don’t want to repeat what happened last year," Sjarief said.
The ministry had intended the boat grant program to help reduce the wealth gap between small-scale fishermen and big fishing companies.
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