Private sector asked to stop littering fisheries facilities with seafood trash

Karachi Fish Harbour Authority (KFHA) on Tuesday asked the private sector to stop littering the fisheries facilities with seafood trash. A meeting of fisheries stakeholders held at the Fish Harbour in which KFHA, Fishermen Co-operative Society (FCS) and Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) discussed measures to find out ways to resume seafood export to the EU. The KFHA has decided to step up strict measures to ensure tidiness.
MD, KFHA, Muhammad Ramzan Awan chaired the meeting attended by Acting Director, MFD, Israr Ahmed and Director, FCS, Haji Khan Mir Khan. The stakeholders agreed on a number of measures and put forward their suggestions to ensure cleanliness at the country's largest fisheries harbour.
The KFHA steps up to aid the chaos plagued Fishermen Co-operative Society (FCS) to carry out extension of auction hall K-I and would approach chief secretary Sindh to resolve the society's crisis, according to the meeting decisions. The KFHA also warned the export-oriented processing plants to follow rules and avoid dumping garbage that turns the harbour roads untidy. The MFD, acting director, however, told the meeting the seafood export suspension, which was placed for untidiness of auction facilities, would continue unless the deficiencies were not removed.
The FCS representative said that the society was 'ready' to remove all the deficiencies that had caused the suspension to seafood export to the EU including mending gates and extending the auction capacity. However, he made it clear that the FCS had run short of cash since Registrar Co-operative Societies had ceased its financial accounts following litigation and its management crisis. The KFHA will penalise any buyers, sellers or processing companies found involved in placing seafood products on the ground, besides asking the MFD to reject the export certification request of the rules violator. The salesmen or fishermen bringing seafood from outside into fish harbour will not be permitted to dump their catch roadside.
The KFHA asked the seafood sellers to acquire stainless steel trolleys and plastic crates from the harbour department concerned to transport their catch to the auction halls and warned them of strict action if they violated the rules and instruction. The mole holders or the FCS administration will take action against the offenders. The authority will also initiate action including fines, if it found seafood processing plants of spreading or dumping waste on harbour roadside. Both the KFHA and FCS will jointly check the harbour's drainage system and other key sanitary facilities to maintain hygienic condition. The MFD will request to the Federal Ports and Shipping Ministry only when it finds a satisfactory result on sanitation within a week to allow further time to the FCS for auction hall extension and mending of gates. A team was also constituted that will have one each representative from KFHA and MFD while Haji Khan Mir will represent the FCS. The team will report on hygienic condition of the auction halls to the MD KFHA on daily basis.