Recently, the Steering Committee on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province (IUU Steering Committee) decided to establish a Team to verify and handle violations of regulations on the fishing vessel journey monitoring system (abbreviated as "Team to verify and handle disconnected fishing vessels").

Accordingly, Ms. Pham Thi Na - Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province, member of the Steering Committee on IUU in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province, is the Head of the Team. Lieutenant Colonel Phan Anh Hiep - Deputy Commander of the Provincial Border Guard Command is the permanent Deputy Head of the Team. In addition, there are 25 members of the Team to verify and handle disconnected fishing vessels from many departments and agencies in the province.

Ba Ria - Vung Tau province established a special task force to combat IUU fishing. Photo: KL

The task of this team is to develop a plan and organize verification of the cause of the loss of connection signal from 6 hours to less than 10 days of fishing boats in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province with installed journey monitoring devices.

Analyze, evaluate, and propose to transfer the file to the competent authorities to handle violations in accordance with the provisions of law; proactively propose solutions to resolve difficulties and problems. In particular, prevent the loss of signal connection to the fishing vessel monitoring device in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province according to authority.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the province is the standing agency responsible for closely coordinating, monitoring, supervising, and evaluating the results of the implementation of the work of handling fishing vessels that lose connection to the signal of the journey monitoring device from 6 hours to 10 days, and submitting it to the Head of the Provincial IUU Steering Committee, the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Provincial National Steering Committee on IUU.

It is known that up to now, the whole province of Ba Ria - Vung Tau has 4,448 fishing vessels, of which 2,703 vessels operate in offshore areas (accounting for 60.77%). The number of fishing vessels from 15m and above that have been installed with voyage monitoring equipment (VMS) is 2,626/2,703 fishing vessels (97.15%), licensed to exploit 2,052/2,703 vessels (75.92%), granted food safety certificates to 2,341/2,703 vessels (86.61%) and extended the registration of 2,078 vessels (reaching 76.88%).

Regarding unregistered, uninspected and unlicensed fishing vessels, the province still has 1,140 vessels. These vessels have been temporarily numbered by the local authorities, 100% of which have been numbered for management. The authorities have instructed the owners of the “3 no” fishing vessels to prepare documents to be registered according to regulations.

It is expected that in October this year, the European Commission (EC) will conduct the 5th inspection on IUU in Vietnam. The 5th inspection is an important milestone for Vietnam to remove the yellow card before the EU election. Therefore, comprehensive solutions are needed to create substantial changes in the fight against IUU to remove the yellow card as soon as possible.