Cape Argus

Fishing concerns take DFFE to court over licences

ENVIRONMEN­T, Forestry, and Fisheries (DFFE) Minister Barbara Creecy is facing separate legal challenges from fishing corporatio­ns regarding the procedure for allocating commercial fishing licences.

At least 12 fishing companies have filed lawsuits against Creecy.

The companies contend that the minister gave them the wrong score, that the appeals process was excessivel­y drawn out, and that the rights allocation procedure was defective. The businesses, which include wellknown brands like Greenfish Traders and Mossel Bay Indigenous Fishermen, have come forward to assert that their applicatio­ns were unfairly evaluated and that their appeals were improperly denied after the appeals process ended last year.

The claims point to serious problems with the Fishing Rights Allocation Process (FRAP) of 2021, which was completed on February 28, 2022, following the submission of 2 473 applicatio­ns and 1 213 appeals, out of which a relatively small number of rights were issued.

The objections made by the corporatio­ns bring up a number of issues, from alleged prejudice in the permitting process to problems with the online applicatio­n system.

According to Greenfish’s court filings, successful paper quota holders who lacked factories, boats, or experience catching tuna, were selling their licences to companies like Greenfish, who were “actually able to fish, process, and market tuna”.

Mossel Bay Indigenous Fishermen, who submitted a second applicatio­n for hake long-line, said Creecy took sixteen months to respond to their pleas.

The business said it was “forced to subsist and barely exist for some two years while the minister and her department made these unlawful decisions to refuse the fishing right”.

The company maintained that even though their fishing rights were taken away in December 2020, “no fishing rights allocation process had been planned due to department­al incompeten­ce and simple bad planning”.

DFFE spokespers­on Peter Mbelengwa said the department was unable to respond to the matter due to the legal process being ongoing.

Meanwhile, in November, Creecy issued her decisions on appeals that were submitted against the decisions of the Delegated Authority in the Hake Longline Sector in terms of the FRAP 2021.

“In my considerat­ion of these appeals, I balanced a wide range of factors, including the principles and objectives of the Marine Living Resources Act, the 2021 General Policy on the Allocation of Commercial Fishing Rights and the sector-specific policy on the allocation of commercial fishing rights in the Hake Longline sector: 2021.

“I was cognisant of the need to introduce new entrants into the sector to broaden access to the fishing industry and to promote transforma­tion of industry,” Creecy said.