Small scale fishers make the list in the Western Cape

DFFE announces final list of small scale fishers

SOUTH AFRICA: The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has announced the final list of declared small-scale fishers in the Western Cape.

The list was compiled in terms of the Marine Living Resources Act’s regulations related to small-scale fishing in South Africa, and followed the Western Cape High Court judgment in favour of the Department and the Minister that set aside the initial process of declaring small-scale fishers in the province.

The Minister had approached the High Court in 2016 for a review of the process following numerous complaints. This resulted in the initial process being set aside and lead to a the institution of a new process that was meant to be fair and transparent.

During the new process over 4,000 verification forms were submitted, with over 84% of applicants being declared successful – this is a significant improvement on the previous 31% success rate of the initial process.

According to statistics released by the DFFE, more than 30% of successful and declared small-scale fishers are woman, while 68% of the fishers are coloured, 25% are black fishers and three percent are white.

Fishers whose application were unsuccessful are able to appeal the decisions. The Department is currently distributing Record of Decision letters which outline the reasons why each person was unsuccessful. In addition, DFFE is providing all the relevant appeal forms and templates for appeals.

The Department is in the process of assisting all the declared small-scale fishing communities with declared small-scale fishers to register co-operatives that will be eligible to be allocated 15-year fishing rights before October 2023.

According to the DFFE, the new process was developed to be more robust and refined. Measures were instituted to include consultation with community-based organisations and community mobilisation; simplifying and translating verification forms and guiding documents and visiting the qualifying communities to distribute and explain verification forms in local languages.

It also provided communities with more than two months to complete their verification forms with the assistance of the Department and community-based organisations as well as the establishment of a verification forms assessment protocol and consistency.