Thai crackdown on rogue fishing as fears grow over EU ban

Yahoo – AFP, Preeti Jha, 1 July 2015

Migrant workers sort fish in a port in Mahachai on the outskirts of Bangkok (AFP

Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

Mahachai (Thailand) (AFP) - A belated Thai clampdown on illegal fishing is forcing unlicensed vessels ashore, threatening to paralyse a key industry as the kingdom desperately tries to avoid a European Union ban on exports worth $1 billion a year.

Barrels of fish packed in ice are usually rolled off boats at a bustling port in Samut Sakhon, a coastal province near Bangkok, by Myanmar and Cambodia migrant workers who prop up the world's third largest seafood producer.

A migrant worker sits on a fishing boat

 in a port in Mahachai on the outskirts of

Bangkok (AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

But many will sit idle from Wednesday, say their Thai employers, who have failed to obtain necessary fishing permits under a raft of new government rules aimed at cleaning up the shadowy industry.

Next to buckets of red snapper destined to become fish balls for the local market and fishmeal to rear shrimp marked for Europe, a Thai vessel owner says there are "too many rules and too little time".

"We will have to keep paying bills with no income," said the worried 59-year-old, who withheld his name, as he prepares to cease operations until he can meet the conditions for a new permit.

The Wednesday deadline to register boats with authorities and acquire permits under revised standards, including installing equipment such as tracking devices, comes after the European Union threatened to ban fish imports from the kingdom unless it combats illegal fishing.

In April Brussels issued Thailand with a "yellow card" for inadequate fisheries monitoring, controls and punishment, warning that a "red card" and eventual import ban would follow if it failed to improve within six months.

The spectre of losing $1 billion in European sales is a shortfall the ruling military can ill-afford in an already sluggish economy.

Thailand saw only 0.3 percent growth in the first quarter and exports have been slowing in part, says the World Bank, due to an erosion in competitiveness.

Aphisit Techanitisawad, president of The Thai Overseas Fisheries Association, estimates around 3,000 fishing vessels nationwide will forsake the seas from Wednesday.

A worker checks canned fish at the 

Anusorn Group factory in Tasai, on the

 outskirts of Bangkok (AFP Photo/

Nicolas Asfouri)

"About 80 percent of all the fishermen, they're coming back to shore" to seek permits, he told AFP at his fisheries factory in Samut Sakhon.

Thailand's image battered

A recent shortage in fresh fish has already seen his workers stop processing crab sticks for French export, instead focussing on canning sardines and mackerel from frozen supplies for the Myanmar and Cambodian markets.

A labour ministry spokeswoman said around 80,000 migrants were working in Thai fisheries since the deadline for compulsory migrant registrations closed Tuesday.

Aphisit thinks the government could have imposed a more lenient timeframe for changes.

But premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha has remained adamant the industry has been left unchecked for too long.

"Don't put any more pressure on government," he said when asked about rising anger within the fishing industry.

"If we don't pass these measures a 200 billion baht ($6 billion) industry could be wiped out so everybody should cooperate," he said.

Thailand's image has been battered in recent years by a series of fishing abuse allegations from prominent rights groups of ships using slave and child labour as well as trafficking victims.

Migrant workers at work in a port in 

Mahachai, on the outskirts of Bangkok

(AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

And last year the US downgraded the kingdom to its lowest ranking on human trafficking, a designation that can trigger sanctions.

Bangkok is desperate to improve its standing, while sanctions have not yet been imposed, laying out new measures including a ban on fishing workers under 18 in the months since. The latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report is due for imminent publication.

Observers say that while the latest threat of an EU ban has triggered a renewed sense of urgency in authorities, rushed actions will fail to combat illegal fishing in the long-term.

Improving "monitoring, control and surveillance" will help to tackle longstanding problems of pirate fishing, slavery and trafficking in Thailand's fisheries industry, said Daniel Murphy, a Bangkok-based campaigner for the Environmental Justice Foundation.

But by rapidly regulating the neglected sector the government "risks regularising more vessels than Thailand's exhausted waters can support as well a significant number of vessels which have spent years openly flouting fishing laws", he said.

In this handout photograph released by Indonesia’s Ministry of Fishery on

 April 8, 2015, hundreds of rescued foreign fishermen mostly from Myanmar and

Thailand are gathered during an operation at the private Indonesian fishing firm

 Pusaka Benjina Resources located in remote Benjina island of Maluku

province. (AFP Photo/Ugeng Nugroho/Ministry of Fishery)

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A fisherman formerly held in slave-like conditions by a Thai-owned fishing firm in

Benjina, Maluku, shows evidence of abuse. (Antara Foto/Humas Kementerian

Kelautan)