By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIAN fishermen are now realising the controversial Fisheries Bill 2020 has a far greater impact than simply banning Dominican fishermen, critics of the legislation are arguing.

Errol Davis, of Fish Farmers, and a Coalition For Responsible Fishing (CFRF) member, told Tribune Business no date has been issued to give the controversial legislation effect.

Mr Davis said: “The Fisheries portion of the Bill has been gazetted, but they have not given us a date in terms of it becoming law. Some of us are a part of litigation against that Bill, and our group involves boat owners, processing plants, the wives of some of the Dominican fishermen who are affected, and some of the Dominican divers themselves.”

The Fisheries Act 2020 seeks to bar all foreign workers from working on Bahamian fishing vessels. Mr Davis and the Coalition, which includes some of the major fishing processors and wholesalers, opposed the Bill’s passage and have now turned to the courts to fight it.

Mr Davis, meanwhile, said he understands that fishermen who once suppprted the Fisheries Bill on the grounds that it would bar Dominican divers and all other foreign labour from the sector are now realising the legislation has a much wider effect.

He said: “For a long time we were trying to educate people that this Bill was not just a non-Bahamian issue. There were some other things in this Bill with respect to those condos (traps). It is almost like leasing the seabed, because the law reads that if you don’t own a trap or an aggregate of condos, you would not be able to remain within a certain radius of that.”

Asking for fishermen to stay within a certain radius of condos on the seabed is “ridiculous”, added Mr Davis, “because some Spanish Wells fishermen have been putting down condos for years all over The Bahamas”. If it were to be the case that any other fisherman cannot come within a certain perimeter of those condos, it will be impossible to manage and impractical to implement.

Mr Davis added: “The ministry made a mistake with only consulting a very small group of persons on this Bill, which would essentially be a select few members of the National Fishing Alliance (NFA). They wrote that Bill one sided, strictly one sided.”

Keith Carroll, NFA president, said that for “years” the Fisheries Bill was under consultation and very few persons wanted to attend the meeting, whether it was the large fish houses or the single-entity fishermen.

Mr Davis, however, disagreed with Mr Carroll, and said he was never formally invited - “not even to their chat group”.

He added: “Now a lot of the other fishermen, who said they were consulted, are now finding out that their boats will be monitored and have a monitor on it. They are now getting up in arms. “Their boats will have what they call this observer. A boat owner has to be totally responsible for them. They have to pay them salary like a regular worker and have to pay for their transportation, and this person has to be with you for as long as they put this person on the boat. It is mandatory.”