Report By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City
FOUR months down the line after the coming into effect of the East African Common Market, cross border fishing in the Indian Ocean is still skewed against Kenyan fishermen.
Kenyan fishermen who dared to go deep southward fishing arrests and prosecution by Tanzanian police, while fishermen from the South are free to go fishing on Kenya’s coastal waters.
According to the arrangement, residents of the countries in the region are supposed to have the access to market and factors of production. But Kenyan fishermen continued to get a row deal as they are barred from fishing in Tanzania coastal waters, and yet their counterparts from the south are having a field day in their northern neighbor’s waters, even at times selling their catches to the locals.
According to the information obtained from the Ministry if Fisheries, several Kenyan fishermen have been arrested and charged by Tanzanian authorities for fishing in their territorial waters..
This latest event has heightened tension between fishermen from the two neighboring countries who have over the years been operating on the same fishing ground.
Kenyan fishermen in the South coast now want the two governments to clearly mark the boundaries to avoid constant harassment at the hands of Tanzanian authorities.
They say fishing has become nightmare for them following recent arrests by Tanzanian police patrolling the East Coast the Indian Ocean, a situation that can be avoided if there were proper boundary marking indicating the exact border lines making much easier for fishermen from Tanzania to fish in Kenya waters. This could easy the existing tension between the two Eastern African nations.
Addressing journalist at the Kenyan coastal ton of Vanga, one of the prominent fishermen in the fish landing areas has extended to inside the Kenya border, Mr Nassor Diwani said conflict will continue getting out of hand and needed to be addressed.
“We have complained about inequality to the relevant authorities, While our Tanzanian counterparts finds it easy to access the Kenyan territorial waters, the same does not apply to us and when we cannot cross south of the border.”
Similar situation persist along the Kenya-Tanzanian border on Lake Victoria where local fishermen from Kenya are not allow to cross into Tanzania side of the lake. Each time they are spotted by the police patrols, they are immediately rounded up and taken into police custody in the mainland for prosecution on charges of trespassing, and yet Tanzanian fishermen cross the border at will undisturbed.
“Over the years, the Kenyan and Tanzanian fishermen have been sharing the same fishing ground were doing that in the spirit of the East African Cooperation, these latest arrests should not happen,” said Mr Diwani.
He added that lack of security patrols on the Kenya side had also led to cases of illegal fishing methods such as the use dynamite fishing destroys marine ecosystem.
The officer-in-charge of fisheries in Vanga district Mr Ronald Deche has confirmed that for the last few weeks ten Kenyan fishermen have been arrested and charged with trespassing in Tanzania territorial waters.”Our laws are not clear on right of fishermen, making it for fishermen from Tanzania to fish in Kenya waters.
Mr Deche told the newsmen that cross border fishing laws needed to be addressed a fresh as countries in the starts formalizing policies for the East African Community. He said fishing has a great potential. In the last year, Kenyan fishermen landed more than one million kilogram of fish. This earned the fishermen more than Kshs 100 million.
As parts of the effort to reduce pressure on the Ocean resources, Mr Deche said that the EAC had embarked on fish farming commonly known as “marculture”This particular effort communities plant mangrove, about orals farming and bee-keeping as alternatives sources of income.
Ends