The Island Council of Lanzarote approved this Wednesday morning the signing of the agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands for the construction of a fish freezing and processing industry in Puerto Naos. Early in the morning, the Minister of Fisheries, Marcos Páez, informed the members of the Fisheries Commission about the terms of the collaboration agreement that has been prepared in the Canary Islands Executive in order to build the fishing industry. The text, which includes an initial global investment for 2005 of more than 209,000 euros, will have to be ratified, which on the other hand is taken for granted, by the Plenary of the Island Corporation to be held this Friday.
Of this first investment, the Cabildo is responsible for disbursing just over 52,000 euros, while the rest will be contributed by the Regional Fisheries Department, headed by Pedro Rodríguez Zaragoza.
The total cost of the work, which is scheduled for completion in 2007, amounts to almost 3 million euros, of which 25 percent, with a total of 249,000 euros, will be financed by the Island Government, while the remaining 75 percent will come from the coffers of the Area headed by Zaragoza.
According to the text of the agreement to which the editors of this newspaper have had access, "the Cabildo of Lanzarote owns approximately 3,108 square meters in Puerto Naos for the execution of the project consisting of the construction of a port equipment building for preferably fishing use, with an ice factory, chambers and a multipurpose room, whose project is called Fish Handling Industry, in order to provide the island's fishing sector, currently with serious difficulties, derived from the lack of adequate cold storage facilities for the treatment of its production, with facilities in accordance with its immediate needs".
The matter was brought to the Commission in an urgent and extraordinary manner. The reasons given by the Minister for the chosen procedure refer to the Cabildo's desire to speed up the tendering of the work in order to carry out the concession as soon as possible, so that the industry is ready by 2007. "We estimate that by September it could already be awarded, lest we not have where to supply ice to the boats or have handling facilities for the year, that is why we are in such a hurry now," explained Marcos Páez.
The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands will apparently come to the Island at the beginning of September to formalize the signing of the agreement. Zaragoza will also have "a meeting with the fishing sector to explain first-hand how the issue of the fishing agreement with Morocco is going".
On the other hand, the Councilor of Alternativa Ciudadana 25 de Mayo (AC-25M), Pedro Hernández, was surprised by the haste with which the Cabildo is acting "on such a serious issue that involves so much investment", although he ventured that the First Institution's desire to complete the work in 2007 has to do with the date of the next municipal elections.
Letter to the Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture
On the other hand, the Commission reached an agreement to propose in the next plenary session of the Island Corporation the sending of a letter to the Minister of Fisheries of the Central Government in order to ensure the licenses corresponding to Lanzarote as a result of the agreement recently signed between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco. "A letter will be sent to the Minister saying that they take into account Lanzarote as a historical territory for fishing, which suffered the most decline after the scrapping of the fleet in 1999," said Páez, who also recalled that this concern for the island's quota originates from the claims currently being made by the Basque Country, which wants to promote that its vessels can access the Canary-Saharan fishing ground. In this sense, all the councilors agree that the granting of licenses to the Basque Country would directly affect the quota corresponding to Lanzarote.
As for the number of licenses that the Cabildo expects to be granted to the Island of the Volcanoes, Páez clarified that this data will not be known exactly until at least the month of September, but "a good figure for Lanzarote would be that eleven tuna vessels enter into the deal, and at most twenty artisanal boats".
With regard to the difficulty that tuna vessels may have in entering the fishing ground due to the preference that the agreement gives to the artisanal fleet, the Minister of Fisheries assured that "tuna fishing does not harm Morocco at all, because they do not dedicate themselves to this species".
Likewise, Páez confirmed that all the fishermen's associations of Conejera will be able to benefit from the licenses to fish in the Saharawi fishing ground. "We are going to fight to make Lanzarote the star of the agreement".