Central fishermen expressing their patriotism (Photo: VOV)

III. Turning the determination into reality

First, it is necessary to promote propagation and education to raise awareness, responsibility, creating a high consensus of all levels and sectors, strata of people, especially the fishermen in fishing and protecting maritime and island sovereignty at the same time. Protecting independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and national security, order, safety at sea means protecting a living space for children ever after. Those thoughts and views should be imbued and turned into action by all localities, all levels and sectors, forces and all people. Local authorities, especially the coastal areas and law enforcement forces at sea, such as fisheries control, the Coast Guard, the Border Guard and the Navy should take advantage of favorable conditions of regular contacts with fishermen in action and at work to promote propaganda in various ways to raise awareness, responsibility for fishermen in fishing combined with protecting maritime and island sovereignty. Propagation contents should be diverse, rich, close to reality and constantly renewed in forms and methods to meet the level of awareness of each object. In particular, it should be focused on oral communication for each vessel; by propagation leaflets, brochures, speakers systems ... right before fishermen set off to sea and even when fishermen are fishing in the high seas of the country. The direction of propagation must be unified, close from the central government to local authorities, be synchronously coordinated between all levels and sectors, and local forces.

The crucial issue for promoting the role of fishermen in protecting maritime and island sovereignty of the Homeland is to have a synced and effective system of mechanisms, policies. In the past years, the implementation of guidelines and policies to support fishermen to develop production and, at the same time protecting the sovereignty of seas, and islands has achieved significant results, but there are still many shortcomings and weaknesses. Currently, the national defense mission is an ever-high requirement to meet, thus to promote the role of fishermen in protecting maritime and island sovereignty of the Homeland requires the Party and State, as well as all levels, sectors and localities to complete their synced and suitable system of mechanisms, policies for an effective implementation. In particular, it is necessary to solve three issues: fisheries, fishermen and fishing ground, especially such pressing issues as capital, means of production, vocation training, organization of production, logistic services, product consumption, the social welfare policies, etc. Effective solutions to the above issues will be the basis for fisheries development goals in a sustainable direction; economic efficiency, improvement of fishermen’s spiritual and physical life, making fishing craft a key industry as well as a motivation for fishermen to cling to seas should be taken into consideration.

In the long term, the State should have integrated solutions to attract investment capital of the domestic and foreign economic sectors, to create a legal environment for cooperation and coordination between banks and sea-food processing enterprises in order to make them become one of the financial organizations to help fishermen get access to bank loans, for the stabilization and expansion of production and development for fishermen. Along with that, the State should have mechanisms and policies to protect fishermen when being attacked and arrested by foreign ships; insurance policies on physical means and ship-owners and seafarers so that they are confident to cling to seas.

One of the important measures to turn fishermen’s determination to cling to seas into reality is to enhance training, fostering and raising the professional level, ensuring income for fishermen. Currently, the issue that is considered a breakthrough is reorganizing production of fishermen, overcoming small-scale fishing, unable to support each other. Based on the results and experiences of the effective establishment of teams, groups, fisheries enterprises production in localities, to propagandarize, apply, discover, study, improve and replicate production patterns at seas. In particular, focus on building models of cooperative groups, fishing cooperatives, and associations who  do their business while protecting the security and sovereignty of seas and islands in each locality. This requires different levels and sectors, including armed forces to communicate, implicate, guide and support fishermen to found the production teams, the fisheries enterprises to generate power to cling to seas, hold traditional fishing grounds even when being the threatened or attacked by foreign ships.

For fishing in coastal and offshore waters, it is necessary to strengthen management, investigation and re-evaluation of seafood resource, identify fishing grounds, anchoring areas, real fishing capability of each locality or inter-provincial areas. For fishing in the offshore areas, it requires an increase in investment for fishing ground forecasting, building database systems on boats, fishing logistics infrastructure, allocating the number of ships on each marine area to ensure harmony of interests between the coastal localities.

Besides, the State, ministries, sectors and localities should boost the development of science and technology in the field of fisheries; to promote seafood export to ensure the output so that the production of fishermen is stable; to perform better protection of seafood resources, marine environmental resources to meet the requirements of sustainable development of marine economy.

History has proven, in every time, every regime, that ensuring "ease the people’s life" is the best way to gather people's hearts - the basis and the foundation for the construction of "people’s hearts and minds based posture". Therefore, the Party and the State should promote synergy strength, all levels and sectors to successfully implement social welfare policies, building social, economic infrastructure - improving fishermen’s physical and spiritual lives. That is the key issue in building "people’s hearts and minds based posture" at sea.

Seas and islands of Vietnam is part of the Fatherland’s sacred territory, which is particularly important position in the construction and development of the country. Protecting our maritime and island sovereignty is vital duties and responsibilities of the entire Party, people and armed forces. To complete the sacred and noble mission, it is necessary to promote the synergy of the country's political system, under the leadership of the Party; the management and administration of the State, especially the need to promote the role of fishermen.

 - End - 

Hong Lam - Van Bay – Hoang Truong