EU to send teams to monitor Thailand’s solutions to illegal fishing this month

BANGKOK, May 3 (TNA) - Officials from the European Union (EU) will visit Thailand this month to inspect progress in the Kingdom’s effort to solve illegal fishing problem. Government Spokesperson Dr Yongyuth Mayalarp told journalists on Sunday that an EU working group will visit Thailand from April 10-22 to follow up progress and give recommendations to concerned authorities regarding the country’s measures to address illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. He said a group of senior EU executives will visit Thailand from April 20-22 to inspect the country’s solutions to the problem. In an attempt to address the IUU fishing, Dr Yongyuth said Thailand has amended the Fisheries Act, which will come into force in the next two months, passed laws and ministerial regulations to plug loopholes in the act, installed Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) in fishing vessels of more than 60 gross tonnages and set up a so called “Port in Port-Out” system to control fishing vessels. The system has been piloted in four coastal provinces and will be expanded to cover all 22 coastal provinces soon, he said. In April, the EU issued Thailand a final warning or a “yellow card” and gave the country six months to improve its measures to solve the problem or face an import ban from the 28-member bloc. (TNA)