As a result, fishers have noted a marked reduction in the fish catch for the last six months, with most getting an average of only 1-3 kilos of small fishes for 3-6 hours fishing.

Wilbert Dimol, chairman of PAMANA-Sugbo, added that despite their protests, the Environment and Management Bureau have given the exploration project a Certificate of Non-Coverage.

Namion hit earlier moves by the provincial government of Negros Occidental to limit fishing in the Visayan Sea, establish more eco-tourism and so-called fish sanctuaries in several coastal towns in northern Negros. It also had a joint proposal with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to impose a five-year moratorium in commercial fishing in the entire Visayan Sea.

Namion also slammed local government units for “not informing the people” of the oil exploration in the Tanon Strait, and “enforcing all sorts of restrictions without the benefit of public consultations and hearings.”

Projects and measures like these, Namion opined, are just offshoots of the government’s “globalization” policies, which now include its destructive mining code of 1995, fishery code of 1997, and the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, which favor big business and foreign monopoly capitalists corporations.

The Negros Fishers Forum, in a press conference yesterday, vowed “to oppose the project, and will exert all efforts to defend their rights and protect the national economy and patrimony from imperialist plunder and exploitation.”

Namion and Dimol said that they will “inform and mobilize as many small fishers and coastal residents in the Visayas, to effectively frustrate the implementation of the oil exploration project.

Richard Sarrosa, chairman of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas-Negros, said that they are also demanding that the Macapagal-Arroyo administration intervene on the issue, and take concrete measures to stop the harmful and destructive oil exploration at Tanon Strait. (Bulatlat.com)

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