Doing that, it said, was important to help to effectively address issues in the fishing sector.

Mr Richster Nii Amarh Amarfio, Secretary of the GTA, also highlighted the need for the assemblies to regularly engage with the fisher folks to get to know and to have a better understanding of everything happening in the sector.

He criticized the present arrangement where the assemblies’ sub-committee on agriculture exercised oversight responsibility for fishing.

“Agriculture and fishing are two different things, agriculture is when you deliberately cultivate your crop, but fishing is hunting. If it is fish farming being considered under agriculture, it is not a problem but if it is fishing in the wild, the process is different.”

He made the call at a forum organized by Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office.

He said the fishing industry had a bigger potential and urged regular stakeholder engagement to ensure that the right things were done.

Mr Amarfio noted that Ghana had enough tuna to feed the country, the European Union (EU) market remained the only hope for the survival of the industry.

He suggested that deliberate efforts should be made towards “creating an internal market in the form of developing dishes that would make use of tuna”.

“I have not seen hotels in Ghana using tuna in their dishes apart from the canned ones they use for salads.”