The Secretary of the National Fisheries Association, Richster Nii Armah Amarfio, has urged the government to treat the struggles of the fisheries sector as a national sector.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Armafio said the government should be focusing on reviving the fisheries sector, not managing it.
“When you have a sector that is basically collapsing, what you need to think about is how to bring it back; how to restore it,” he said.
Mr. Amarfio noted that the policy that concerned the fishing sector needed to factor in other areas of development.
“It is not a specific sector challenge. It is a national crisis that we have seen with the fisheries sector.”
One of the issues he cited was the management of waste.
“We need to change our mentality towards construction. You can’t continue to construct drains and channel them into natural water bodies.”
Mr. Amarfio was speaking after reporting in the Daily Graphic that only four out of 76 commercial fishing vessels are fully certified by the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and presently undertaking fishing expeditions.
Because of this, he expects Ghana to continue to rely on imports of fish.
“We have basically been relying on imported fish. This Christmas is sad, but we will have to continue to deal with the imported fish.”
Ghana imported about 343,000 megatonnes of seafood products in 2021, according to a United States Department of Agriculture report.
This amounted to $290 million in seafood and fish products.
