Owners of fishing vessels giving their license to be used by other vessels are not permitted.

Minister for Fisheries Semi Koroilavesau told FBC News that the Ministry will come down hard on owners of vessels who are involved in this.

Koroilavesau says it’s been a common practice in the past but now there’s a strong need to curb it.

“Now we are trying to control that because the fishing license is basically given in conjunction to the application that has been launch, I think some of the fishermen when they do not have the urgency to go and fish they pass it to another fisherman to use their fishing license which is not allowed.”

With this being an ongoing issue, Koroilavesau says actions will be taken if fishermen continue to do this.

He says this practice is affecting their data collection.

“Yeah especially when we try to collect data on stock assessment basically as we know Fiji has been overfished so this is something we are actually working on now, you can see that our officials are going around Fiji in trying to establish that its area is confined to the fishermen that have a license for it.”

Koroilavesau says they will also monitor issuing of license and at the same time ensure vessel owners follow the regulations that are in place.