Amid proliferation of illegal fishing gear such as monofilaments, the Department of Fisheries has disclosed plans to start engaging traders on use of legal fishing gear.
Senior Deputy Director of Fisheries Responsible for Community Outreach and Training Jacqueline Kazembe said in an interview that despite a ban against the use of the illegal fishing nets, the equipment is still widespread on the market through uncharted routes.
Kazembe said this is the reason they want to embark on a drive to establish taskforces at district council level to raise awareness, issue warnings and confiscate illegal fishing gear from traders.
“What we have also decided to do is to engage stakeholders at district level. We want to establish taskforces and include members in those groups, including trade officers, enforcement agencies such as police and community development leaders, so that we now target the traders.
“We will be going into their shops, first of all to provide awareness to them and also show them the correct gear that they have to be buying. And also give them warnings to say that this [monofilament] is no longer allowed. And then we will have a system in place of actually confiscating the gear if found being sold in the shops. This is one way of addressing the availability of illegal fishing gear,” she said.
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Recently, some fishers through beach village committees from lakeshore districts of Karonga, Nkhata Bay, Rumphi and Likoma asked the government to ban importation of illegal fishing nets if they are to tame the use of the same in the country.
One of the fishers Silvester Nyirenda said efforts to fight against the use of illegal nets are facing hurdles because they are easily accessible compared to legal nets.
Commenting on the same, Find Your Feet Programmes Manager Sain Muskambo, whose organisation is implementing a Restoring Fisheries for Sustainable Livelihoods in Lake Malawi (Reflesh) programme, said they are glad that the government issued a ban on the use of monofilament but there is still more that needs to be done.
Muskambo observed that some fishers think when the monofilaments are banned then their fish catches will be low.
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“On our part, we are capacitating fishers through BVCs on the dangers of using monofilament. The feedback that we are also getting is that if we completely ban monofilament, what will be the alternative? So, at this point in time, I think, as a project, what we are looking at now is that the fishing nets that are legal should be accessible and should be affordable,” he said.
Fisheries is an important sector in Malawi’s economy, contributing about four percent to the national gross domestic product, providing nearly 33 percent of the protein intake of Malawi’s population, and supporting the livelihoods of nearly 1.6 million lakeshore community members through fishing, fish processing, fish marketing, boat building and repair of engines, boats and fishing nets, according to Food and Agriculture Organisation.
