Africa-Press – Angola. Construction work on a commercial port in the fishing municipality of Nzeto, northern Zaire province, could start this year, announced Saturday in Soyo, the provincial governor, Adriano Mendes de Carvalho.
The official made this statement during a visit of a few hours that the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Cármen do Sacramentos dos Santos, made to Soyo, stressing that, in addition to the commercial port, the village of Nzeto will also have a new bridge pier.
According to the governor, the two port infrastructures to be built in partnership with the Ministries of Transport and Fisheries and Marine Resources are in the technical and budgetary evaluation phase.
He said that these are infrastructures that will boost economic development not only in Zaire but also in some border provinces.
The governor considered the current conditions for mooring vessels on the sea coast of Nzeto to be difficult, due to the severe state of degradation of the current (wooden) pier bridge, inaugurated in 2017.
Faced with this situation, a technical team from the Ministry of Transport was in Nzeto a few days ago where it assessed the current state of the bridge, which will be replaced by another one made of reinforced concrete.
Minister wants more inspection along the sea coast
In turn, the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Cármen do Sacramento dos Santos, said that new inspection strategies along the seafront will be implemented in the coming days, to discourage illegal fishing in the region.
The minister made this statement after learning about the two industrial vessels seized, recently, 27 miles off the coast of Kinzau, municipality of Tomboco, with about 200 tons of different fish.
According to the minister, despite the lack of technical means for monitoring the sea coast, the competent authorities have made a great effort to discourage this phenomenon.
He added that in order to combat this evil, the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources relies on the involvement of defense and security bodies and, in some cases, with some countries in the region, having highlighted the seizure, in the first quarter of this year, of 10 industrial segment vessels.
He explained that some seized vessels were found inside with nets of the double bag brand, prohibited by law as they are harmful to biodiversity.
He accused some shipowners of resorting to such practices for unconfessed purposes, without, however, looking at the environmental sustainability of marine resources.
According to the minister, this behavior obliges the authorities to adopt a law that could criminalize such acts to safeguard biodiversity on the Angolan coastline.
The province of Zaire, in the north of Angola, has a coastline of 250 kilometers crossed by the municipalities of Nzeto, Tomboco and Soyo. JFC/JL
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