13 - 19 September 2001

Fishermen demand compensation from government after tuna disputes

by Ivan Brincat

The National Fisheries Cooperative is reported to have asked the Maltese government for compensation running into thousands of Maltese liri.
Sources told The Malta Business Weekly that in a letter sent to Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, the cooperative is reported to have asked the government for compensation following the recent tuna disputes.
The figure includes the Lm75,000 which the fishermen claim is their share from the tuna given to the Italians in the so-called tuna war dispute, as well as the money lost by the Maltese fishermen because of the government’s cooperation with the spotter planes which operated illegally from Malta during June.
The fishermen are calling for compensation for various reasons.
They have stated in a separate document that the recommendation that no spotter planes should be used in the Mediterranean during June is being blatently ignored.
In a proposal which had to be discussed at the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, the Maltese cooperative has recommended that the countries where the planes are registered and the countries which allow such planes to carry out these activities are heavily fined. They hope that this would serve as a deterrent.
Earlier this year, the Koperattiva Nazzjonali tas-Sajd had called on the minister of agriculture and fisheries to resign three times because they had lost faith in him and because the government was not acting in their interests.
The “tuna wars” escalated in July but the dispute had been brewing since February when the cooperative had decided to administer the tender for the export of tuna fish caught by Maltese fishermen.
Last year, the tender had been administered from the ministry through the department of fisheries.
The cooperative was not happy at all with the way things went in 2000.
“So this year we decided to administer the export of tuna directly using the same conditions. We made a call for tenders to award an exclusive contract for the export of tuna,” the secretary general of the cooperative Raymond Bugeja said.
All procedures were carried out and a
totally independent committee was set up to examine the most advantageous offer.
The cooperative had issued a call for offers from companies with an interest in purchasing the fish between 20 December and 17 January. It received proposals from five different companies
Mr Bugeja said the Spanish firm Ricardo Fuentes offered the highest price per kilo which was around 50 cents more per kilo than what Azzopardi Fisheries (which came second) offered.
Ricardo Fuentes is Europe’s largest fish company and has tuna fish farms in Spain and Croatia.
The contract was awarded to Fuentes.
Mr Bugeja said that Azzopardi Fisheries made a second offer after losing the tender. “The fishermen rejected an intervention by the minister to award the contract to Azzopardi Fisheries because the tender had been carried out in a transparent manner. We did not accept this proposal.”
Mr Bugeja added that after this episode, the government decided arbitrarily to issue an export licence to another cooperative which only represented one fisherman through its agreement with Azzopardi Fisheries.
“The government gave a pro-rata licence allowing us to export 270 tonnes of tuna with the other cooperative Ghadqa Koperattiva tas-Sajd being given 15 tonnes.”