Give poorest of poor priority attention

We, poor fishers, together with millions of poor Filipinos, will be watching President Rodrigo Duterte’s first steps as president.

The country’s fishers and the poorest of the poor expect his propoor election campaign promises translated into concrete actions. Under the outgoing President Aquino, the fishers have suffered from hunger and poverty more than anyone can imagine. Two out of five fishers’ families live on less than P52 per day with no support from the government.

The wretched plight of the fisherfolk is being perpetuated by the antifisherfolk laws and programs of Aquino administration, which are implemented in a framework of the neoliberal globalization that serves only the interests of foreign investors and monopolies. The almost two-decade-old Fisheries Code of 1998, as amended, is much to blame for their suffering.

The law promotes the plunder of our seas by large-commercial fishing fleets to roam within the 15-kilometer municipal fishing waters. Allowing these fleets thus deprives the fishers in effect the income much needed by their families to pay for their basic needs. Further the law allows private individuals and large corporations to lease and own vast expanse of fishing waters under its so-called Foreshore Lease Agreement, thus displacing thousands of fishers from their traditional fishing grounds.

Fearing that the country’s marine products will be barred from entering foreign markets, the Aquino administration pushed the amendment of the Fisheries Code which has made matters worse for fishers, especially the small-scale fisherfolk. Under the amended law, stricter fishing rules and regulations and heftier fines and taxes are imposed. It has also made it mandatory for fishers to register their fishing gears and boats at unaffordable fees; and it has imposed a color coding scheme that limits the number of days fishers can go fishing, and an absurd rule that asks them to report the quantity and kind of fish they are able to catch. The law and its amendments have worsened the adverse impacts of the Fisheries Code on fishers.

We have suffered long enough. We demand the repeal of this outrageous Fisheries Code.

The Aquino administration’s so-called “development” projects, coupled with massive reclamation and conversion of fishing waters into commercial and business hubs, have displaced thousands of fisherfolk communities and deprived them of their main source of livelihood. The reclamations have also put our rich fishing waters and environment in a miserable state.

The fisherfolk are always the first in line to suffer when disasters strike, but the last to benefit when it comes to relief, support and assistance.

With the Davao city mayor assuming the presidency soon, we challenge him: Put an end to all laws and policies that perpetuate the decades-old poverty and suffering of the country’s fisherfolk.

—Salvador France

vice chair

Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya-Pilipinas)