BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE the Hon. Eugene Hamilton has announced that the recent visit by officials of the European Union was a success, but declared that there are still several areas in the agriculture sector upon which the government has to place more emphasis.
The Minister had earlier this year said in Parliament that the officials would be coming to St. Kitts and Nevis to ensure their recommendations were implemented, which pushed him to lay several bills before the House for safe passage.
One such is the Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Resources Bill of 2015, which sought to protect the Federation’s fishing interest at all levels.
That came on the heels of the controversy over the extensive fishing in St. Kitts and Nevis’ waters by foreign vessels that would later market their catch as not being from the Federation.
This situation had seen the name of St. Kitts and Nevis being embroiled in a controversy which led to the European Union recommending the necessary legislation be passed to protect the Federation’s interest in that area.
During a recent interview with SKNVibes, Minister Hamilton explained that the government held a meeting with EU officials to discuss matters and they came up with a road map to fix unresolved issues.
“As far as I am aware, we are on schedule to finish what has got to be implemented within a certain timeframe. So unless there is something new, I think that we are meeting our target,” Hamilton said.
Coming out of that meeting, the Federation was told to tighten up on several regulations of which the Minister did not disclose, but noted that moves would be made shortly to have those regulations fixed.
He revealed that the amendments to the regulations "do not require parliamentary oversight”.
Hamilton explained that “the main driving force behind what the EU wants from us is to ensure that we have all the mechanism in place to prevent illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing. I think they were particularly pleased that we have gone ahead and passed our legislation which would meet the standard that the EU would want to have implemented”.
Due to several restrictions, the Minister declared that the government may not be able to put in place some of what the international body wants implemented.
