WINDHOEK - Cabinet has approved a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for the upcoming hake and rock lobster fishing season.
Cabinet gave the green light for the TAC for hake to be set at 154,000 metric tonnes for the 2019 fishing season scheduled from 1 November to 30 September 2020.
Announcing the decision yesterday, Information and Communication Technology Minister Stanley Simataa said Cabinet has approved that a TAC for rock lobster be set at 180 metric tonnes from 1 November to April 2020 fishing season. The submission of TAC was given to Cabinet by fisheries minister Bernhard Esau.
Last year, Cabinet also approved 154,000 metric tonnes as TAC for hake, for the 2018/2019 fishing season, which begins 1 November and ends on 30 September 2019.
Cabinet also approved Namibia’s accession to the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships ‘Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004.
On February 2004, the ‘‘International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments’’ was adopted, with provisions to regulate and control ballast water management to minimize the hazards to the environment, to public health, and to properties and resources in the transfer of living aquatic organisms worldwide in ballast water and ships’ sediments.
This convention requires a ships’ ballast water management based on two different standards. One is related to the exchange of ballast water in the mid-ocean and the other is called biological performance standard once it is based on organisms’ concentration and indicator microbes.
Cabinet also took note of the 2018 annual report of Fishcor, and authorised the minister of fisheries to table the said report in the National Assembly. Simataa said Cabinet directed the Office of the Vice President’s Disability Affairs department to take note of the draft report on the implementation of the Continental Plan of Action on the African Decade of Persons with Disability (2010-2019).
Cabinet also directed ministries of Gender Equality and Child Welfare; Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation; and Home Affairs and Immigration to consider the draft 10-year action plan on Eradication of Child Labour, Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Africa (2020-2030).