Mata Jeli: A perspective on Indonesian Affairs
Bruce Gale, Straits Times 4 Apr 08;
'OUR fishermen remain in backwaters while foreigners rake in proceeds from the sea,' lamented Indonesian Seafarers Union chairman Hanafi Rustandi last week.
Mr Rustandi has a point. Since the 1980s, and especially since 1999 when Myanmar closed its territorial waters to Thai fishermen, Indonesian fishing grounds have been increasingly targeted by foreign fishing fleets, many of them allegedly bribing marine police and navy patrol units in order to avoid paying hefty licence fees.
Indonesian law requires these vessels to sell their catch within Indonesia and pay taxes equal to 2.5 per cent of the value. The idea is to raise revenue for the government while also encouraging the development of a local fish- processing industry that can contribute to the nation's exports.
The difficulty, of course, is enforcement. Most foreign fishermen - notably Thais - prefer to take their catch to their countries of origin. But because the fishing vessels cannot store the cargo for long, many foreign fleets use trampers, which are larger vessels that receive and store fish - mostly tuna and mackerel - from other vessels. The catch is transferred at sea, violating rules requiring fishing vessels to transport their catch to local processing plants.
Before 2006, the presence of a tramper in Indonesian waters was a good indicator to the authorities that they should investigate. After all, only local and foreign joint venture companies that owned processing plants in Indonesia were allowed to export fish. But Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi issued a decree in 2006 allowing companies that did not yet have a processing plant in Indonesia to export their catch.
The loophole gave unscrupulous businessmen a valuable opportunity to clothe their operations in a semblance of legality. Last month, the Jakarta Post quoted an unnamed senior official in the Fisheries Ministry as saying: 'It remains unclear whether the ministry is sloppy in granting licences, or if there is a deliberate attempt on the part of some officials to make way for poaching.'
Indonesia's traditional fishermen have another complaint - over the environmental impact of trawlers. Trawlers work by pulling a net along the seabed, scraping up everything in their path. Because the practice can cause serious damage to coral reefs and thus destroy fish-breeding areas, it was banned in 1980. But there has been little or no enforcement.
A recent report by Jala, a Medan-based non-governmental organisation promoting the interests of fishing communities in North Sumatra, says corrupt officials have been directly involved in the expanded use of trawlers. This, together with the failure of the trawlers to observe the 3-mile zone off the coast of Sumatra reserved for traditional fishermen, has been responsible for much of the violence at sea between Indonesian fishermen and trawlers, says Jala.
Small boats form the backbone of Indonesia's fishing industry. The Fisheries Ministry says there are 590,610 fishing vessels operating, of which 99 per cent are small or medium-sized craft.
Late last year, police detained 14 fishing vessels, including four trampers, for alleged poaching not far from Tual and Benjina Islands in Maluku in the eastern part of the archipelago. Most were Indonesian-flagged vessels of Thai origin. One tramper, the Pongtif Reefer, was equipped with 3,400 cu m of cold storage.
But such crackdowns are not always what they seem. While police insisted that they acted on their own initiative, an unnamed official later told the media he believed the raid was actually the result of rivalry between Taiwanese and Thai business groups and their respective local protectors.
The Taiwanese group, he said, was supported by a local businessman who 'asked his friends at the National Police to teach his rivals a lesson'. The Thais, he said, were believed to have the support of a group of Indonesian naval officers and bureaucrats.
While inadequate enforcement can be partly explained by the high levels of graft within government agencies, equipment shortages are also an important factor. A Jakarta Post report last month noted that the economy was losing an estimated 30 trillion rupiah (S$4.4 billion) each year to illegal fishing, but the marine police had only one patrol boat to cover the whole of eastern Indonesia.
International action is also necessary. Already, Indonesia and Australia have joined forces to discourage Indonesian fishermen from responding to the depletion of local fish stocks by moving into Australian waters. In 2006, Canberra gave Jakarta a US$72 million (S$100 million) grant to develop fish ponds in areas such as South Sulawesi and Merauke in Papua, where many of the fishermen arrested by Australian patrols originate. As a result, the number of Indonesian vessels apprehended for fishing illegally in Australian waters has plunged.
Early last month, Indonesia sought to extend this cooperation by hosting a three-day international forum in Bali to discuss a proposed regional action plan to combat illegal fishing in the region. Cooperation from the Thai government in particular could go a long way towards protecting fish stocks in Indonesian waters.
But if rampant illegal fishing in Indonesian waters is going to be tackled effectively, Jakarta must first get its own house in order.
