KUCHING: The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) has been asked to safeguard the state’s maritime borders against security threat.
Deputy Minister for Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs and DAP Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen noted that local fishermen had been affected by the increasing intrusion of illegal fishing boats into Sarawak waters and stealing its maritime resources.
“It is estimated that our country loses up to RM7 billion worth of fish and maritime resources annually, due to these foreign fishing vessels trespassing into our waters.
“That is why drastic and effective measures have been taken by the Federal Government in an effort to address this issue,” he said.
Chong also said that among the measures taken to stop this threat is the multi-agency operation called ‘Ops-Naga’ that started since May 2, 2019 to catch these illegal fishing boats.
Those nabbed would be charged under Section 15(1)(a) of the Fisheries Act 1985 for trespassing and illegal fishing, Section 6(1)(c) of the Immigration Act and Section 14(3)(b) of the Fisheries Act.
“Since then, some 80 foreign fishing boats have been seized and their crew arrested. That is why we urged the Ministry to intensify such efforts especially in the waters around Sarawak to address this issue for the benefit of our local fishermen.
“The Minister of Defence has given a positive response and also will bring it up in the Cabinet to extend the operations as well as intensify it to give greater assurance to our local fishermen,” he said.
He revealed that the minister would discuss the issue with neighbouring countries at the General Border Committee (GBC) meeting in October.
“We also proposed other long-term measures that the Ministry can take including incorporating new technologies to help in carrying out their enforcement.
“Thus, we proposed to them to increase in modern maritime assets such as deploying modern scanners and even military surveillance UAV to watch our borders especially in Sarawak and the South China Sea.
“This includes advance surveillance technology that employs innovative, integrated and actionable intelligence across all departments and agencies to create a Maritime Domain Awareness to better monitor our maritime borders.
“This is important as many of these illegal trawlers and fishing boats are getting ‘more high tech’ in order to avoid detection,” he said.
