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At the conference, Deputy Director of the Directorate of Fisheries Surveillance under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Duong Van Cuong informed that regarding illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the Directorate of Fisheries Surveillance and Directorate of Fisheries had recorded positive change in localities, comprising the result of installing vessel monitoring system (VMS) reaching nearly 100 percent; vessels management works and certificate of seafood traceability.

However, although there were many violated vessels in localities, the handling results were not as expected.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien said that the whole country has 86,820 fishing vessels with a proportion of VMS installation of 97.65 percent. The rest number of the boat has been under a high risk of violation.

In order to reorganize the prolonged violation, the leader of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that functional agencies would impose strict measures to monitor the vessels, comprising increasing six devices of monitoring to conduct stringent penalties for violated vessels; adding regulations of fining both boat owner and captain and allowing the coast guard to handle the violated boats.

Deputy Director of the Directorate of Fisheries Surveillance Duong Van Cuong informed that in October, a working delegation of the European Commission (EC) is set to visit Vietnam for checking IUU regulations for the fourth time.

From now to October, the National Steering Committee will continue to check the IUU implementation in localities and support localities having numerous violated vessels.

Source: SGGP