TEMPO.CO, Depok - The Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries Affairs has drowned more than 200 foreign and Indonesian boats that have violated the law during the two years of Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla administration. The Ministry's Special staff of the Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Task Force Yunus Husein said that there is at least one illegal fishing boat caught every day.
“Most of them were caught in the vicinity of Natuna and Bitung,” he said at a discussion in Depok on Thursday, October 20, 2016.
Yunus said the foreign boats that committed violation are mostly apprehended at the Exclusive Economic Zone. There are also Indonesian boats that hire foreign seamen with fake Indonesian identity cards.
The fishing boats committing violation at the Indonesian-Philippine border are mostly small sized boats. The authorities mostly drown Vietnamese boats. “We never grant permits for foreign boats (to fish),” he said.
According to Yunus, a large number of local fishing boats that use cantrang (trawl net) and explosive devices to fishing are still found. So far, the perpetrators will not be convicted because the regulation has not yet effective until the end of the year.
He said that the boats are mostly get drowned rather than being confiscated since the cost would be much cheaper. As well as not to hand it over to other parties, such as universities, local governments, and fishermen. “We’ve once given it to a university but they never collected it,” said Yunus.
If it is given to local government, he said, no one would maintain it. And if it is handed to the fishermen, it would be sold again. “The other problem of auctioning it is that it would be purchased by the same person,” Yunus explained.
IMAM HAMDI
