Mr Richster Nii Amarh Amarfio, the Vice President of the National Fisheries Association of Ghana (NAFAG), has petitioned the Attorney General to intervene in happenings in the implementation of the Electronic Monitoring System (EMS).
Mr Amarfio stated in the petition copied to the Speaker of Parliament and available to the Ghana News Agency, that “My humble plea is to seek your intervention as well as that of Parliament to immediately halt all activities and allow full Parliamentary scrutiny and the necessary laws enacted, for a proper take-off of any such activity.”
He said the transfer of funds had been affected by the Ghana Industrial Trawlers Association (GITA) on behalf of its constituent companies to a US-based company under the instructions of the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development without proper contract.
Giving a background of the issue, he noted that Trawl vessels were industrial steel vessels that fish generally for demersals (bottom fish) within the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of Ghana, adding that the EMS, which was like a close circuit television (CCTV), provided for motion picture, monitoring of all activities on the vessels for purposes of observation, data collection, management as well as enforcement.
The petition stated that Section 100 of the Fisheries Act 2002 (Act 625) provides for observers on fishing vessels in Ghana, adding, “The provision provides that such observers must be public officers with scientific and monitoring functions.
“This is being fully complied with, at least by industry actors, ensuring 100 per cent observer coverage on all vessels”.
He explained that this provision had not been amended to allow for EMS, which were inanimate and could not qualify as public officers; therefore, employing EMS had become a challenge with the current law’s position.
“There is supposed to be a contract, which remains draft and not signed, titled ‘Integrated Monitoring Customer Services Agreement.
“This supposed contract is expected to be between Integrated Monitoring Incorporated (IM), a corporation registered in the State of Delaware, in the United States of America, as the service provider, and the Ghana Industrial Trawlers Association (GITA), which is a private, not-for-profit entity incorporated in Ghana, which is supposed to have entered this agreement for and on behalf of its members, private companies, registered under the Company’s Act as companies limited by shares,” he said.
Mr Amarfio added that “10.4 of the agreement makes the United States Laws, the governing laws of dispute, and all hearings under the American Arbitration Association rules shall be seated in Boston, Massachusetts. Though the services are provided to Ghanaian companies in Ghana. This makes the cost of seeking arbitral redress extremely expensive, and in the event of visa refusal, parties affected may never have justice.”
He said, GITA as a body, does not have vessels, and shall not be a direct beneficiary of this contract; yet companies that owned the vessels by the provision in point 10.8 of the agreement may not be able to independently enforce any breach since they are third parties to the contract.
He stated that the agreement, when signed, would give the company (IM) the right to collect national data without limitation to call set-up, environmental, technical, operational, and other data.
“Does that mean any groups of individuals may sign any international agreement just to allow for national data to be collected by private international groups without approval from the state?” he questioned.
He stated that in a bid to compel industry to sign this agreement, the Minister, acting under the authority of the Fisheries Act of Ghana, made the EMS an additional licensing condition, stressing that “in effect, the Minister, through administrative fiat, amended Section 100 stated supra, to include EMS as public officers. At the time, this condition precedent for the issuance of fishing license fiat was sanctioned by the Hon. Minister, not a single EMS had been procured and installed, and none has been yet. Fishing licenses for all vessels were suspended until commitment fees had been paid not to the supplier but to a third party.”
The NAFAG vice president added that “their licenses are yet to be issued. In effect, fishing vessels expected to resume fishing from 1st September, some of which paid full third quarter fishing license fees, have yet to receive their license. Most of them have also paid for their 4th quarter license commencing 1st October 2024, and still have their licenses in abeyance.”
He said even though, per the understanding of the players within the trawl sector, the Ghana Fisheries Recovery Activity, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, was funding the acquisition and installation of the EMS equipment, all trawl companies operational in Ghana have been forced to pay a minimum of US$5000 excluding bank charges, and at the request of the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, it has been transferred or is being transferred to The Nature Conservancy in the United States of America, which is not a party to the proposed contract.
GNA
LS/KOA/CAA
10 Oct. 2024
