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span class="inline inline-left">Illegal fish: An officer shows a confiscated pack of mackerels during an inspection at PT Jakarta International Container Terminal in North Jakarta. Thousands of tons of frozen fish smuggled into Indonesia has been seized by the government and will be returned to the countries that sent them.JP/Nurhayati Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Fadel Muhammad has set a seven-day deadline for several importers to return to their countries of origin tons of fish that they illegally imported into Indonesia.

The majority of the fish are salted fish and mackerel.

“What makes me upset is that these illegal imported fish are ones that are found easily in Indonesian waters,” he told reporters after signing a letter of intent (LoI) with the government of Timor Leste at the State Palace on Tuesday.

However, Fadel stopped short of saying whether the government would impose sanctions on the importers if they failed to meet his deadline.

As of March, the ministry had seized 190 containers (equal to about 5,134 tons) of frozen fish at three ports, 126 of which were from China.

Of the 190 containers, 72 were found at Belawan port, Medan, 81 at Tanjung Priok in Jakarta and the rest at Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya.

The ministry also seized a further 7,868 tons of illegal imported fish that arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Minister Fadel conducted an unscheduled inspection at the Jakarta International Container Terminal in Tanjung Priok on Monday.

He said that the fish had been imported illegally by 13 companies belonging to three Indonesian businessmen in cooperation businesspeople from China.

“We will blacklist them,” he said without giving the names of the countries.

The 2010 Ministerial regulation on quality control and the safety of fishery products stipulates that illegally imported fish should be returned to their country of origin within three days to ensure the fish do not go off.

Indonesia is one of the 10 biggest fish producing countries in the world, and has a national fish consumption of about 30.47 kilograms per capita per year. The industry has targeted to produce 27 million tons of fish this year.

The People’s Coalition for Equal Fisheries (Kiara) criticized the government for failing to implement the 2010 regulation, which sets a three-day deadline for the return of illegally imported fish.

Kiara said the fish had been in Indonesia for one week.

“The fish must be destroyed after the three-day deadline. The government must be consistent with the regulation to prevent unlawful importers from importing fish with poor quality as it could harm the Indonesians who consume it,” Kiara secretary-general Riza Damanik said on Tuesday.

A study by Kiara showed that Indonesian fishermen had been able to work 180 days a year last year on average due to inclement weather, down from the normal average of 240 to 300 days per year. This, it showed, had had a major negative impact on traditional fish markets, 80 percent of which were supplied by traditional fishermen.

The government has long been criticized for not supplying fishermen with accurate and regular weather forecasts.

According to Kiara, 68 traditional fishermen were killed or reported missing due to extreme weather from January to September in 2010, and 550,000 fishermen from 53 regencies have been affected by the nation’s wild weather.