DOHA: A fishermen’s cooperative on the lines of the one that was announced for Qatari farmers recently, is to be formed soon. Its aim is to encourage private investment in the field and boost fish production mainly by setting up fish farms and seafood processing industries.
The effort would help bring seafood and seafood products prices substantially down in the Qatari market for the benefit of consumers at large.
It would also help fishermen and processing plant owners in a big way by bolstering demand for their catch and products and by providing opportunities for export. Qatar is currently heavily dependent for its fishing needs on the sea. However, once the cooperative is in place aqua farming would be encouraged in a big way.
Also, people have gradually been shunning fishing as an occupation so the cooperative would trigger their interest back in the field. Membership to the proposed cooperative will be open from June 22 to July 3 only to Qataris having fishing license and owning fishing boats or trawlers.
Members will need to buy shares of the cooperative but no one would be permitted to own more than 10 percent of the cooperative’s share capital.
A news conference was held recently at the Ministry of Economy and Commerce where plans to set up the cooperative were announced. Present were Mohamed bin Saeed Al Mohannadi, Director of Fisheries Department at the Ministry of Environment, and Nasser bin Jarallah Al Marri, from the economy ministry, among others.
Reacting to media reports about the proposed cooperative, a prominent representative of the fishing community, Faleh Mubarak Al Hajri, said they had been waiting for such an initiative for the past 10 years.
“This is wonderful news,” he told a local Arabic daily in remarks published yesterday. “The initiative would help both, the consumers and producers.”
Another fisherman said that the move was heartily welcome as it would help unite the activities of fishermen in the four main areas of the country: Doha, Al Wakra, Al Khor and Al Shamal (north). Yet another fisherman said he hoped that one of the mandates of the proposed cooperative would be to manage the local fish markets.
The Peninsula
