SAMSA Cape Town fishing indaba delves into safety matters

Pretoria: July 12 2018.

Safety on board South Africa’s fishing industry sea going vessels is among key operations aspects of the sector that can never be left to chance, delegates to the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) hosted ‘Fishing Safety Indaba‘ held in Cape Town heard on Wednesday.

According to SAMSA in statement ahead of the event Wednesday,  held at the Lagoon Beach Hotel in Milnerton, the Fishing Safety Indaba is a part of a series of engagements by SAMSA with its core stakeholders.

Wednesday’s event – the 6th in the series – was hosted by SAMSA’s dedicated Centre for Fishing  and whose aim according to the agency, is “to promote the updated fishing safety legislative, technical, operational and financial issues and engage the fishing industry on development issues and growing the blue economy.”

Ms Nondumiso Mfenyana,  a Manager in the SAMSA Centre for Fishing,  said the Cape Town Indaba was a continuation of a SAMSA’s aim to engage with all sectors of the fishing industry to mainly address issues such as safe fishing.

“The fishing industry is SAMSA’s largest commercial customer, a major employer and contributes both to export earnings and to the GDP of the country. It is important that we ensure regular sittings of this nature in order to keep the industry abreast of developments thereof,” said Ms Mfenyana.

The SAMSA Centre for Fishing is also the secretariat of the National Fishing Forum (NFF) which was established in 2011.

The NFF was initiated to create a platform for stakeholders to share knowledge on common areas of interest, improve collaborations and decision making to avoiding duplication. The forum’s mission is to grow, develop and ensure a competitive South African Fishing industry.

Provisional members were nominated to partake in the steering committee, which was later endorsed as a fully fledges forum at the South African Maritime Industry Conference (SAMIC 2012). In turn, the forum has achieved some of its objectives; although still have some challenges that include the funding of its action plan.

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