The Central Regional Fishermen and Fishmongers Association (CENFA) has called on the government to issue biometric cards to duly registered canoe owners to facilitate their business in the country.

That would reduce the influx of middlemen in the distribution of premix fuel, which had been mishandled by some landing beach committees.

“Due to delay in supply, the Landing Beach Committee members who are in charge of selling and distributing premix fuel, have resorted to illegal selling of the available supply to middlemen.”

“Ideally, 4.5liters of premix fuel should cost Gh¢7.30p, but the middlemen end up selling the premix to the fishermen at Gh¢21.00 across the fishing communities in Ghana.

This was contained in a statement signed by Mr Francis Kwofie Adams, the Chairman of CENFA, and copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA)in Cape Coast on Tuesday.

He recommended that the government has introduced a monitoring system that would track tanker dispatches from Tema Oil Refinery to landing sites.

Fishing communities should be supported and politicizing the selling of premix fuel to the fisherfolks stopped, the statement added.

“Fishermen are not able to make profit from their fishing activities making them unable to sustain their families financially due to the unavailability of premix fuel and the high cost of fishing”.

It called on Government Auditors to monitor the activities of Landing Beach Committees since their operations were in the interest of the populace.

The Government of Ghana, established the National Premix Fuel Committee in July 2009 to supervise the administration and distribution of premix, a very huge subsidized petroleum product required by fishermen to power their outboard motors.

To ensure effective management, Landing Beach Committees (LBCs) were set up at various landing beaches to empower fishermen to operate premix fuel stations at the various sites to ease their plight of getting the commodity.

Statistics from the National Petroleum Authority indicate that between the years 2000 and 2018, national premix fuel supply increased from 42 million litres to about 73 million litres, with an average annual growth rate of approximately four per cent.

The statement urged the authorities to ensure that Landing Beach Committees were accountable to fisherfolks at various landing sites across the country.