Half of fish pens in Dagupan are illegal
THE Dagupan City government is poised to take legal action against owners of 310 of the 796 registered fish pens in the rivers of Dagupan City for their refusal to demolish and or renew their Aquaculture Lease Agreement (ALA).
According to City Agriculture Officer Emma Molina, she gave her recommendation to City Administrator Alvin Fernandez, after the erring operators have refused to respond to her office’s series of notices.
It will be recalled Molina appeared before the city council late last year and reported the failure of more than half of fish pen operators to renew their licenses but continue to operate.
To date, she said the city government has also issued licenses to 400 registered fish traps that include “sky labs”, “sky blues”, oyster beds, “sure win” and “poket” scattered in many rivers,
Molina also stressed that the present number of fish pens (both legal and illegal) still does not exceed the maximum allowable number of 1,200 based on a study conducted in 2003 by consultancy group Cruz Corporation.
The study was used as a basis by the city council for drafting the fisheries ordinance that imposes the ALA and from which fees may be collected from operators.
Molina said that in 2009, only 486 fish pens renewed their ALA and paid their corresponding dues to the city government.
Some of the operators who did not renew their ALA have not demolished their contraptions but merely raised the pens’ nets to show that they are not operating.
She said her office had conscientiously sent notices to the fish pen owners to renew their ALAs but the 315 merely ignored these.
Molina suspects that the reluctance of fish pen owners to renew their ALA might be due a misinterpretation of an ordinance (No. 1768) enacted by the city council in February 2007 granting operators a 50 per cent discount in their ALA fees following a major decline in the market price of bangus from P80 to P46 per kilo.
But while the ordinance was enacted during the term of then Mayor Benjamin Lim, it was not implemented immediately as it still lacked the implementing rules and regulations (IRR).
It was only the new city administration of Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. that an IRR was finally adopted and the discount for the ALA fees was effected.
Molina clarified that the discount provided for in that ordinance was good only for 2007 and not a permanent benefit as some operators might have assumed.
She said her office made this clear to the operators in various notices and still many refused to renew their ALAs, hence her recommendation for the city government to take legal action against them.–LM
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