Deputy Executive Director in the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Ueritjiua Kauaria said that contrary to criticisms, no region was left out in the granting of fishing rights as it was done according to set criteria.

Kauaria who was responding to critics on the allocation of rights as some regions feel they have gotten very little to nothing of the ‘cake’, said it may have happened that certain regions such as the two Kavangos, Omaheke, Kunene, among others, performed poorer than other regions or did not apply.

“These regions are among those who each got less than four per cent of the rights, not because of the granting but because of the applications. If the volume from these particular regions was less, then the outcome was the direct consequence of the application regions,” he said.

He said the granting of fishing rights is captured as part of the process of the calling of the rights. The recent granting happened as a result of the criteria which was given at the time of calling the rights in 2018.

A decision was already made in 2018 that the applicants should represent different regions in one application. Meaning applicants were encouraged to apply already as having different regional representation of more than one region,” Kauaria noted.

Kauaria stressed the issue of over-capitalisation and over-capacity in the industry, noting that it is difficult to pinpoint which company deserves more and which one does not.

“At the end of the day, you have a commitment towards a company or a right holder to give them a quota. So the fact that a right holder has a bigger factory than the other does not mean that the one with no factory should be left out. In the process of sharing the cake, you will have a situation where the newer rights holders come in, it inevitably would affect the allocation of quotas to the existing companies, which is normal when resources have to be shared,” he alluded.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency