DA QUESTIONS INTEGRITY OF PERLEMOEN QUOTA PROCESS.

Over half the fishermen who were recently granted permits by the department of environmental affairs to harvest limited quantities of perlemoen (abalone) in South African waters, obtained their quotas on false pretences. This is according to Democratic Alliance sea fisheries spokeswoman Antoinette Versfeld, who told a media briefing at Parliament on Friday that 100 out of a total of 185 perlemoen quotas were questionable. "The allocations should never have been made because these 100 applicants are already employed," she said. It is understood the department received well over 500 applications. One of the criteria it applied in deciding which applicants qualified for a quota is whether they were employed elsewhere, or had another source of income. This was confirmed later on Friday by the department's deputy director-general, Horst Kleinschmidt. He told Sapa: "The way this issue was dealt with is... (if) a limited-rights quota applicant... had another source of income, or another main source of income, then they would have fallen out of the system." The limited-rights perlemoen quota allows its holder to harvest under 850kg of the highly-lucrative resource over a four year period. The main aim of the system is to nurture micro-enterprises that may eventually grow into fully-fledged businesses. The department overhauled the entire rights allocation process for all species of commercial fish, including ...