Re-inviting EU team for inspection: KFHA given August deadline for boats modification

The federal government has set the month of August as the final deadline for Karachi Fish Harbour Authority (KFHA) to modify 50 fishing boats under a plan to enable EU to inspect the harbour infrastructure.
According to fisheries sources, the federal government has asked the provincial government to modify a batch of 50 boats before the end of August so that EU could be recalled to inspect them and also the harbour's basic infrastructure, including auction halls, besides private processing plants. This decision came at a meeting of Minfal and Sindh fisheries minister held earlier this month in the federal capital, they said.
Sources said that the task was earlier assigned to the Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) to introduce five such modified boats, but it failed to accomplish the task. Now the federal government has decided to get the long awaiting project done through KFHA.
The cost of a single boat, which is now being modified by the Wada, local boat builders, at the fish harbour is Rs 0.4 million, while the same was previously quoted at Rs 1.2 million by the Karachi shipyard department concerned.
In March this year, MFD Managing Director Ishrat Javed told Business Recorder that five modified boats in line with the EU specifications, in different models would be introduced in April. However, so far Marine Fisheries Department has not made any progress..
The sources said the country's seafood export has surpassed $200 million mark for the first time in the history despite the EU ban for more than a year. This has also prompted the federal government to speed up the process of getting the ban removed.
They said that the modification of boats through Karachi Shipyard has become not only a delayed project almost close to scrapping it, but was also three-fold costlier now. They said that it is a wise decision of the government to shift its plan for immediate results. However, they doubted whether the EU inspection team will visit Pakistan this year.
Historically, the boat modification policy came from Commodore Tayyab Naqvi, former chairman of KFHA and Fishermen Co-operative Society (FCS) in 2000. Under his plan, he had envisaged the difficulties of the fish harbour and boat-owners, which finally occurred in 2007 in the shape of EU ban, they said. President of Bona Fide Fishermen and Boat Owners Welfare Association Asif Bhatti, termed it a difficult and expensive exercise which would produce 'insignificant results'.
He said that the government's unclear policies over the years have hurt the interest of fishermen. He said that the MFD's vague decisions and KFHA's apathy are primarily responsible for the delay in the boat modification project. KFHA's official said that Karachi Shipyard's concerned department has failed to accomplish the task and the cost has gone higher by three times. "Some 27 boats are under the modification process. In the first phase, the government has chosen those boats which require minor modification work," he said.