-Director
By Ragan Conteh
Kadijatu Jalloh, Director of Fishery and Marine Resources, yesterday 12th September, 2019 confirmed to a cross-section of the media at a press conference organized by the Ministry of Information and Communications that the ban on Sierra Leone’s fish export to the European markets is still in existence.
According to Madam Jalloh, the reason for the failure by the EU market to accept this country’s fish is as a result of poor hygiene and quality standards to export fish to EU markets.
She added that the cause of fish scarcity on the market is bound by the high level smuggling of fish to the neighboring countries like Guinea, Senegal, Mali and Nigeria, among many others.
She said as a result of such challenges the Ministry of Fishery is undertaking a fish survey in Sierra Leone’s territorial waters to determine the number of fish, as well as to establish the daily fish catchment areas in our waters.
She went on that the purpose of the survey is also to determine fish biomass and map out the distribution partners of fishing vessels that want to undertake fishing activities in the country.
Madam Jalloh revealed that the Marine Resources Ministry contributes 10% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and that it generated Le70.9 billion in 2017, Le94.5 billion in 2018 and for the first quarter of this year Le72.5 billion respectively.
She concluded that the Fishery Ministry has instituted a monitoring team for illegal fishing in the country’s territorial waters, informing that the Ministry has also observed that illegal vessels coming into the country also carry migrants from Sierra Leone to overseas.
She said the Minister of Marine Resource will be visiting the European markets to see how best the country can resume the exportation of fish to their markets to generate more revenue for the country’s development projects.