Fishing licenses around Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake revoked

Aug 16, 2011
Xinhua

PHNOM PENH (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday he has cancelled the licenses of all 35 fishing lots around Tonle Sap Lake in five provinces, saying that the lots have caused a great destruction to the country's fish resources.

The license revocation was made after the premier's public announcement on July 1 to sack fishery chiefs in five provinces around Tonle Sap Lake in order to make way for an investigation into fishery offences.

The five provinces around the lake are Battambang, Kampong Chhnang, Pursat, Siem Reap and Kampong Thom.

"After the investigation, we found that fishing lot operators had used banned fishing nets to catch the fish, they caught even small fish; moreover, they used chemical substance to drive fish away from flooded forest into their lots in order to catch them," he said.

"It's a great destruction to the fish resources," he said. "The suspension of fishing in the Lake will be in effective at least 3 years in order to increase fish population."

The premier added that despite their great destruction to the fish resources, the government has not taken any fishing lot operators or fisheries officials to court for punishment.

Fishing as family condition is still allowed around the lake, he added.

The government has earned the revenues of merely more than 2 million U.S. dollars a year from the fishing lots, he said.

"We do not need it if it costs great destruction to the fish resources."

Tonle Sap Lake, also known as Great Lake, is the largest lake in the Southeast Asian nations. During the monsoon season, the lake swells to cover nearly one-fifth of the country