Indonesia’s new government, which came into power in October last year, is taking a very hard line with both illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) and slavery as part of its commitment to preserving the country’s marine resources and avoiding any illegal practices within its fisheries, according to Saut P Hutagalung, the Republic of Indonesia’s Director General for Fisheries Product Processing and Marketing at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF).
“Sustainability is part of the president’s vision,” Hutagalung told SeafoodSource at Seafood Expo Global. “This is not just a question of sustaining resources, this is also about how to sustain livelihoods, the fishing profession and the economies of our coastal communities.”
Since the Southeast Asian country’s president, Joko Widodo, announced a policy to combat IUU in November, a number of steps have been taken to “break down illegal fishing,” such as running checks on the larger domestic and foreign vessels and the co-operations that exist, said Hutagalung.
By the end of this month, MMAF will have details on the number of vessels operating in the country’s waters and the number that “need to be sent home,” and it is working closely with neighboring countries like Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines to enable this to happen.
Through its IUU crackdown, the Indonesian government recently discovered cases of slavery, involving some 2,257 foreign crewmembers. To date, 400 crew have been evacuated for their own safety to their home countries of Burma, Cambodia and Laos with the help of the International Organization for Migrants (IOM) and institutes of human rights. A new legal process is underway to deal with the rest.
“This really opened our eyes. But the government has reacted very quickly to tackle the problem. The president created two task forces on 8 April, one for combating IUU fishing, the other to handle slavery issues, to escalate the seriousness of the problems," he said.
“Slavery shouldn’t happen anywhere, it’s against humanity and it’s totally unacceptable. Our government is very serious about ending it and IUU fishing.”
To ensure the process remains fully transparent and to alleviate concerns in the marketplace, Indonesian government officials have also approached the foreign embassies to show them “on the ground” how it is combating the situation, he said.
