The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA) and Marylanders including chiefs, elders, fishermen, fishmongers and sea chiefs have agreed and signed a resolution to construct, and use a central fish landing cluster worth US$3 million in Harper.
NaFAA Director General, Emma Metieh Glasco, during the signing ceremony held recently in Harper, Maryland County, said that government has secured US$60 million from partners to construct and use modern landing clusters in the nine coastal counties of the country.
She said those facilities will include bulwark, post-harvest facilities, fish markets, marine stores, schools for fishermen and fish mongers’ children, and clinics.
According to the report, Glasco narrated that the modern fish clusters, when completed, will be the only landing site for kru and Fanti canoes, including migrant canoes in Maryland, Sinoe, Grand Kru, Montserrado, Grand Cape Mount, Bomi, Grand Bassa, and Rivercess Counties.
She stated that fresh fish market when built will serve as central market for all fishmongers and only recognized fish mongers‘ will be purchase from fishermen directly.
NaFAA in recent time went on a 10-day tour to all fishing communities in the four coastal counties in the southeast, beginning with Maryland County.
Glasco told the local media that the objective of the tour to the region is to have face-to-face interaction with fishermen and fish mongers‘to identify the predicament confronting them and to find a remedy to their problems.
Meanwhile, the authority has vowed to renovate Harper Fish Market and build mini -drying stations for fish mongers` while awaiting the construction of the modern facility.
She also donated fishing nets to fishing communities in Maryland County.
Since 2018, the entity seems to have transformed and highly recognized if not, only locally but internationally and has been one of the key patrons to the national budget.
NaFAA was established by an Act of the Legislature in 2017 as an autonomous agency with a mandate to manage the fishery resources of Liberia and to preserve its natural habitants or surroundings, heritage and sovereign rights for the benefit of the Liberian people.
