June 03 - GSD Questions Why Government Has Not Yet Published Fishing Report
The GSD has today called on the Government to make public the Fishing Report. A spokesperson said: “It will be recalled that the Government has had a copy of the report since December of last year. During Parliamentary Questions and Answers, the Minister for the Environment, John Cortes, said that the Government could not provide the Opposition with a copy of the report because it needed to be ‘formatted’ but that it would be published shortly. The GSD Opposition would like to remind the Government that it has been saying that it will publish the report shortly for some time now. When further asked why the Opposition had not been briefed on the report when the Mayor of La Linea had, the Minister denied that Ms Araujo had been briefed.”
The spokesperson continued: “Clearly, the lack of ‘formatting’ is not a reasonable explanation for the failure of the Government to publish a report that it has had for six months and neither is the assertion that the Mayor of La Linea has not been briefed on the report tenable in the light of public statements made by the Government in the past. For example, on the 19 March a Government spokesman is quoted in the Gibraltar press as saying, after a meeting between the Chief Minister and Mrs Araujo, that: ‘Mrs Araujo raised and was briefed on progress in respect of matters arising from the report of experts on fishing in BGTW’ and Mr Picardo himself is also quoted as saying that the report: ‘Could form the basis of a satisfactory solution for both sides’.”
In the GSD’s view, “the failure to publish the report is wholly unsatisfactory and is adding to the considerable uncertainty facing this community, including our law enforcement officers. We do not know why there has been such a long delay, but the Minister’s explanation in Parliament is simply not credible and we call on the Government to publish the report without further delay. As we have said on numerous occasions in the past, despite the very poor handling of this issue by the Government, we will in Gibraltar’s best interest support any reasonable solution to this issue.”
