Letters | Sunday, 07 December 2008

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Ministry defends tuna industry

I must express my amazement at the fact that, notwithstanding the solemn declarations that it will continue to follow the stories related to the tuna industry (MaltaToday, 30 November), your Midweek edition (MaltaToday, 3 December) chose to make no reference to the declaration by the European Commission whereby it confirms that the alleged discrepancy in the tuna catch declarations submitted by Malta in 2007 and 2008 where the result of a typing error by one of its employees.
Furthermore, the European Commission also reiterated that it is simply untrue that Malta is being singled out for any investigation on its management of the local tuna industry. Neither did your newspaper carry the Ministry’s press statement on the same subject.
Given the extensive coverage afforded by your newspaper to this subject over the past months, I am sure that your esteemed readers would be interested in knowing these important facts which only confirm what the Ministry has been saying all along – that our management of the local tuna industry is in order and in conformity to the existing regulations.
It must be pointed out that this Ministry will stop no one from covering any story and its policy, as always, is to remain accessible to the media. However, this Ministry also has strong reservations on the way that your medium has chosen to report this story, where notwithstanding the various clarifications it chose to continue to repeat certain unfounded allegations ad nauseam.
The Ministry’s policy is to go all the way to defend any legitimate operations, including those of the local tuna industry. The Ministry also renews its standing invitation to all interested stakeholders, including your correspondents, to verify for themselves all the records pertaining to this industry.

Keith Galea
Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs

Editorial Note:

Mr Galea evidently didn’t read the 26 November edition, which stated: “And yet, this consignment still found its way into an official declaration by the European Commission to ICCAT earlier this year: not as carry-over, but as part of the total farmed tuna for 2007... Sources within the Commission admitted this was a mistake, and that the government had declared it to be still present in cages belonging to Fish & Fish. However, the 210 tonnes in question were never registered as an import.”

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