DA calls for urgent amendment to lockdown fishing regulations to save subsistence fishing community
20 May 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has written to the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF), Barbara Creecy, requesting an immediate amendment to the Covid-19 lockdown fishing regulations to lift the restriction placed on recreational fishing which will allow for subsistence or "own-consumption" fishers to feed their families.
The DA has received hundreds of desperate pleas from subsistence fishers who are in possession of recreational fishing permits, but have been prohibited under the lockdown regulations to fish. This gap in the fishing regulations has resulted in entire subsistence fishing communities left without the opportunity for self-reliance and even more vulnerable under the already dire economic circumstances facing South Africans.
In the letter to Minister Barbara Creecy, we have requested that the restriction on subsistence fishers in possession of valid recreational fishing permits be lifted with the following provisos:
Social distancing to be adhered to at all times; and