Fishermen are angry that concessions they had been getting on fuel are now being taken away.
The Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA) claims that this was being abused and some fishermen were re-selling the cheaper fuel and making a fat profit instead of going out to fish.
While this could be true of a few individuals, most of the 1,000 or so artisanal fishermen, providing Seychellois with their main protein source, view that as a gross insult from SFA GM Randolph Payet.
Even Ronald Cafrine of the Ministry of Finance has not gone that far and said the measures reflect economic realities and not necessarily linked to any abuses. They are part of new fiscal measures, Cafrine said, But this revealed another of Randolph’s Payet shortcomings as he was unable to introduce measures to curb the alleged abuses but paradoxically he has devised a complex procedure involving the use of VMS monitoring to shadow the fishermen everywhere in order to curtail abuses.
Fishermen will now have to pay the same prices at the pump that is R 16 for diesel as motorists. Previously they were issued with vouchers which entitled them to concessionary fuel for just over R5. Fishing boat owners will now only be able to recoup trades tax and GST by filing claims with the SFA in a bureaucratic exercise which is likely to cause more confusion rather than resolved the problems.
Mr Goerges Michel, Chairman of the Boat Owners Association, said the measures were uncalled for and as usual had been taken unilaterally without any prior consultations whatsoever with fishermen and boat owners. He stated it was already taking the SFA three months to process refund applications from just 4 long-liners. How on earth are they going to deal with 1000 or so fishermen who will file their claims? He said that they will have to employ more people when recently they have made several employees, thought to be opposition supporters, redundant. This is clearly a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Furthermore, besides fuel, boat owners were spending a lot more on food and other items, whose prices have recently sky-rocketed. Whatever happens, this is likely to trigger off another increase in the price of fish which is a commodity consumed by almost all Seychellois every day. It is the poor consumers, mostly in the lower-income bracket who will bear the full brunt of SFA’s latest gaffe.