T

he Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has leveled accusations at owners of low-yield fish processing units (UPI) for setting up facilities as a ruse to obtain permits and conduct transshipment practices for overseas delivery.

Citing interim results from the verification process, Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said a processing facility'€™s low utilization level was a strong indicator that the owner used it as '€œcamouflage'€ for other illicit practices. One region that shows an indication of foul play, she revealed, was Bitung, North Sulawesi, where three foreign-owned UPIs and another four domestic processing facilities operated.

The three foreign processing facility operators had been complaining that they were almost forced to shut down ever since the ministry placed the moratorium on license renewals for foreign-made vessels and the open-sea transshipment ban, Susi said.

Indonesia obliges all foreign-made fishing vessels to either partner with existing processing units or build their own.

In spite of this, ministry data show that several UPIs in Bitung had low utilization levels well before the two policies were enforced. On average, the utilization level for all seven facilities stands at 45.1 percent in 2013 and 36.68 percent in 2014.

'€œThey built production facilities so that their ships can have the necessary operational licenses. They went on strike because their transshipment practices came to a halt, but then again, their UPIs were never in use,'€ Susi told reporters recently.

Susi singled out Filipino-owned PT RDP, which established a new facility in 2014 but hardly uses it. Its utilization level is 2.01 percent out of a total yearly capacity of 45,000 tons.

She also mentioned local business PT DCC, with a facility that can process 7,500 tons per year but experienced a slump in utilization from 25.85 percent in 2013 to 11.24 percent the following year, after the moratorium came into effect.

Meanwhile, the ministry'€™s director general of fisheries products processing and marketing, Saut Hutagalung, said there was a widespread tendency for UPIs to deviate from their main function of processing catches obtained from partner fishing vessels.

After observing 186 out of the total 501 processing facilities in the entire country, Saut said that most UPIs were problematic, indicating that these facilities were used more as temporary storage houses for catches before they were transshipped overseas.

However, Abrizal Ang, treasurer of the Indonesian Pole and Line and Hand Line Association (AP2HI), said a facility'€™s utilization level was dependent on prevailing market conditions as well as the availability of a crew.

'€œThe seven UPIs in the area must compete for the same group of workers. On some days we get 100 or 200 people, but other days when the weather is bad, we get less,'€ Abrizal told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Abrizal said the fluctuation in the number of workers could potentially affect productivity levels up to 50 tons per day, with bad weather and the inevitable absence of shipmates forcing businesses to halve utilization. The utilization level also depended on the amount of fish feed that is available in the area, he added.

As a member of the board of PT Samudra Mandiri Sentosa '€” one of the seven companies operating in a processing facility in Bitung '€” Abrizal said the firm had been able to produce 60 tons from the total daily production capacity of 70 tons, before the moratorium slashed productivity to 20 tons a day.