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Ghana’s fish landing sites under threat – FoN

About half of Ghana’s fish landing sites across the coast are under threat, Friends of the Nation (FoN), a non-governmental organisation has said.

According to them, most of the fishing communities were losing  their source of livelihoods  to  the increasing takeover  of  the  shorelines  for  residential and commercial  facilities to the  detriment of  fishing.

The Programmes Manager of  FoN, Kyei  Kwadwo Yamoah said this  at a day’s national multi-stakeholder  policy  dialogue  on securing  fish landing sites  in Accra.

The policy dialogue aimed at engaging policy makers, stakeholders on fish landing sites securing Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) and Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries (SSF) guidelines to promote impactful policy development planning.

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 It is also to improve policy formulation and implementation to promote responsible governance of tenure, sustainable, social  and economic development  and help eradicate poverty and encourage responsible investment in the fisheries sector.

VGGT is an international instrument that can be used by many different actors to improve the governance of tenure of land fisheries and forests.

According to Mr Yamoah landing sites were important in the fishing industry as fishermen would need to land their canoes and fish as well as process it.

He said it was therefore necessary to secure landing sites for the fishermen as “they are one of the most important elements that support the fishing industry.”

In order to  ensure  the  security of  fish landing  sites across the country,  Mr Yamoah  said, his  outfit  was  collating recommendations and  roadmaps that would help them streamline the  securing of fish landing sites  and ensure that they were properly demarcated and documented as well as legally approved  for  fishing communities.

“This will ensure that investors and developmental agencies would not come and take over landing sites in the near future,” he added.

 Mr Yamoah said his outfit and its partners through the application of the VGGT principles were securing fish landing sites in five pilot communities namely Kedzikope, Abutiakope, and Whuti in the Volta Region, Anomabo in the Central Region and Abuesi in the Western Region.

 These landing sites, he said were being secured under the ‘Far Ban Bo’ (FBB) project  which  is a four-year  European Union- funded  fisheries  governance  project  being implemented in Ghana  from 2017 to  2020.

He  said  the purpose of securing  the landing sites  was to contribute  towards protecting and improving the livelihoods  of smallholder  fishers  and other users of fishery resources  through providing  social and economic  safeguards.

The Executive Director of FoN, Mr Donkris Mevuta said community and stakeholder consultations were held to inform the fishermen on the objective and purpose of securing their interest in securing landing sites.

 He also mentioned that negotiation, boundary setting, field mapping, documentation and registration with the relevant public institutions and traditional authorities were done to ensure they were approved.

BY JEMIMA ESINAM KUATSINU & GLORIA NSIAH MINTAH

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