EDITORIAL: Let’s fish for change
Namibia’s fishing industry needs more than just a tune-up; it needs heart surgery. It stands as one of our country’s key economic pillars, yet its impact on everyday Namibians remains a cruel irony. The riches of our waters have birthed instant millionaires, but for the communities that should benefit, there’s little more than breadcrumbs.
Where are the roads built from fishing profits? The soccer stadiums? The vocational training centres to nurture the next generation? Instead, the wealth of the sea is being funnelled into luxury cars, opulent mansions and offshore bank accounts, while the very people this industry was meant to uplift remain stranded on the shores of economic exclusion.
Today’s revelation on our front page lays it bare: N$30 million, earmarked for an educational institution, miraculously (and allegedly) transformed into apartments and Toyota bakkies. This is not just mismanagement; it is a betrayal of trust, a robbery of potential, a crime against progress.
It is precisely why we welcome the government’s shifting approach – the auctioning of fishing quotas. This method has already provided direct revenue to the state, ensuring that at least some of the wealth from our waters trickles back into national development. It is time this became the standard, not an exception.
Let those who wish to fish pay Caesar his dues first. Once their obligations to the state are met, they can gallivant all they want, guilt-free. But for too long, quotas have been handed out on sentimental grounds, wrapped in the language of economic empowerment, but yielding nothing but vanity projects and superficial acts of goodwill. Soup kitchens and sporadic charity drives are no substitute for meaningful, lasting investment in our people’s future.
Where are the roads built from fishing profits? The soccer stadiums? The vocational training centres to nurture the next generation? Instead, the wealth of the sea is being funnelled into luxury cars, opulent mansions and offshore bank accounts, while the very people this industry was meant to uplift remain stranded on the shores of economic exclusion.
Today’s revelation on our front page lays it bare: N$30 million, earmarked for an educational institution, miraculously (and allegedly) transformed into apartments and Toyota bakkies. This is not just mismanagement; it is a betrayal of trust, a robbery of potential, a crime against progress.
It is precisely why we welcome the government’s shifting approach – the auctioning of fishing quotas. This method has already provided direct revenue to the state, ensuring that at least some of the wealth from our waters trickles back into national development. It is time this became the standard, not an exception.
Let those who wish to fish pay Caesar his dues first. Once their obligations to the state are met, they can gallivant all they want, guilt-free. But for too long, quotas have been handed out on sentimental grounds, wrapped in the language of economic empowerment, but yielding nothing but vanity projects and superficial acts of goodwill. Soup kitchens and sporadic charity drives are no substitute for meaningful, lasting investment in our people’s future.
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Namibian Sun
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