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Seafood processing workshops sitting idle
A lot of shrimp and fish processing workshops in the central region and the south have been sitting idle or running perfunctorily due to lack of materials. Many female labourers in the industry are at risk of losing their jobs.
Fishing output on the decrease
In the last two weeks, the number of fishing boats docking at Tho Quang port in Da Nang city has been decreasing sharply. Tho Quang Fish Market, one of the big seafood markets in the central region, is gloomy these days. T, a petty merchant at the market, related that previously she collected 250-300 kilogrammes of cuttle fish a day to provide for processing workshops, but these days the volume is just half of this.
Head of the Tho Quang Port Management Board Nguyen Tuan Ngoc said that some 150-180 tonnes of fish on average arrived at the port a day previously. However, the figure has dropped to 100 tonnes per day now. Only 700 ships dock at the port a month now, instead of 900.
Trinh, a boat owner in Da Nang city, said that as the fuel price has increased, and the fishing ground has been narrowed, many ship owners dare not go out to sea anymore.
The lower fishing output has forced many processing workshops to work perfunctorily. At Phuoc Tien General Trade Company, some production lines which serve the processing of products for export to Japan and South Korea have stopped running or have been running at half of the designed capacity. Phuoc Tien’s chairman said that in the past month, the company’s capacity has decreased by 50 percent because of lack of seafood materials.
Nguyen Huu Dung, Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Processors (VASEP), said that 80 percent of female workers in the seafood processing industry are facing the threat of being laid off.
Low aquaculture output
A number of seafood processing workshops in Tac Cau and Rach Gia city in Kien Giang have been working at just 50-60 percent capacity, though they have a lot of orders.
Truong Thi Loan, Deputy Director of Kien Long Seafood Company, said that the company’s workshop has the capacity of 10 tonnes per day, but she can purchase only two tonnes of materials per day.
Similarly, Deputy General Director of Kim Anh Seafood Company Do Ngoc Tai, said that the shrimp processing workshop needs 100 tonnes of shrimp materials per day, while it can collect 15-20 tonnes only, as many farmers are not injecting more money in shrimp ponds at present.
VietNamNet, TT
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