Pretoria - Fishermen are urged to lodge their appeal in the long term fishing rights allocation process before the closing date on Friday, 21 February.
In a statement, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries spokesperson, Palesa Mokomele, said late appeals will not be accepted, and anybody who feels aggrieved is urged to lodge an appeal before the closing date.
According to Mokomele, Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson has been advised that to date, no appeals had been received.
She said fishing rights in KwaZulu-Natal prawn trawl, demersal shark, squid, tuna pole-line, hake handline, white mussel, traditional line fish and oyster fishing sectors were allocated for periods ranging from two to eight years. All rights in these sectors expired on 31 December last year.
Mokomele said the department received a total of 3 490 rights applications, adding that 110 were for demersal shark, 530 for hake landline (154 applications were from companies and 376 from individuals).
A total of 81, according to Mokomele, were for KZN prawn trawl, 260 for oysters, 308 for squid, 1 566 for traditional linefish, 329 for tuna pole-line and 306 for white mussels.
“There have been 593 successful applicants and 2 893 unsuccessful. In the demersal shark fishery, the provisional results indicate that rights have been received by 96.22% black owned companies, of which 50% are female; this is in comparison to 63% black owned companies in the 2005/6 allocation.
“In the hake handline fishery, the provisional results indicate that rights beneficiaries are 83.3% are black owned and 24% female. In traditional linefish, 77.2% are black owned, of which, 7% are female,” she said.
Applicants, who are successful or unsuccessful, may, in terms of the provisions of Section 80 of the Marine Living Resources Act appeal to the minister against the decision of the delegated authority.
The appeal shall be dealt with in the manner and in accordance with the procedure prescribed by the minister.
An applicant has 30 days after being notified of the decision to appeal to the minister and an appeal must be served on the delegated authority, at the venues in the Western Cape; in Cape Town, Hermanus and Saldanha; Port Nolloth in the Northern Cape; Pretoria in Gauteng; Durban and in Port Elizabeth or per registered post.
The department will make an announcement regarding exemptions to former rights holders in due course. - SAnews.gov.za
