President Ellen Johnson – Sirleaf has dedicated the Bureau of National Fisheries at the Freeport of Monrovia and the Robertsport Fish Landing Site Cluster in Grand Cape Mount County, instructing that both marine and land fishing should be strengthened.
“Both marine as well as land fishing, we need now to strengthen them. This function must pass to the Liberia Maritime Authority [to its] independent autonomous body and must have the capacity to be able to manage it,” Mrs. Sirleaf said Friday morning, 24 November while dedicating the facilities at Freeport.
The President says she wants to see the facilities outsourced, meaning that she does not want government people to manage them. She says private company that has the capacity to manage the facilities must manage them through a bidding process so that Liberia can rebuild its fishing industry.
Mrs. Sirleaf thanks the Liberia Maritime Authority (LMA) and its supporter World Bank and others for the tremendous job done to formulate the policy, the regulation and to draft the Act that brought in the new autonomous institution that will manage the fishing business.
Mrs. Sirleaf notes that today Liberia have the National Fishery and Agriculture Authority which is to be the independent group that manages the fishing sector here.
Dedicating the Robertsport Fish Landing Site Cluster in Grand Cape Mount County later on Saturday, 25 November, Mrs. Sirleaf says she is so glad for the project that started long ago when Madam Florence Chenoway was Agriculture Minister.
Mrs. Sirleaf repeats that the only thing that is needed to be done is to put the facilities into the hands of sound management, outsource it to private sector to manage it properly so that it can be a great boost to the economy to Grand Cape Mount to Liberia by extension.
She asks Maritime to work on improving the capacity of Liberia’s fishermen because they are going to be the key contributors to the fish that will be processed at the facilities and sent out.
Concerning the road reconstruction in the area, Mrs. Sirleaf assures that the fixing of the road will start in December 2017.Earlier, World Bank Country Manager Ms. Larisa Leshchenko said in support of West Africa Regional Fisheries Program, the World Bank provided the needed funding to develop the infrastructure at Robertsport to help increase value added to fish product.
