Fishermen to sell directly to consumers?

The agriculture and agro-based industry minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob urged fishermen in Malaysia to sell thier catch directly to the consumers and stop depending on middlemen. He stressed that the ministry will wipe out the role played by the middlemen who have been exploiting the fishermen for years.

Bravo,YB! But did you know that what you proposed had already been tried some 28 years ago, and failed miserably?

At that time the middlemen(majority of them are Chinese,incidentally) had been harshly accused as "blood suckers". Co-operatives were set up in every state with the help of the government.Fishermen rushed to join these co-operatives as members. They believed that they will be free from the iron grip of the Chinese middlemen. Little did they realized it was just the beginning of their nightmares.

Although these co-operatives were housed in big offices, with complex refrigeration system and manned by personnel with high qualifications,but the efficiency was extremely low.When the fishermen returned from the sea there was no one at the jetty to wait for them.They had to find their own transportation to ferry their catch to the office of the co-operatives.Worse still, when arrived at the office, it was closed.When the officers were confronted later, they gave tons of excuses.What could the poor fishermen do? They were officers!

The consumers were not happy either. The price remained high,, but the freshness of the fishes were not maintained. On top of that, the supply was also erratic.

Mean while the middlemen suddenly found themselves out of job.They had to eat, right? So they bought their own boats and employed workers to go to sea for them. Their big regular customers like restaurants still preferred to buy from them due to long standing good-will rather than the arrogant co-operative officers.

In the good old days the fishermen could easily get a loan from the middlemen by signing a simple IOU,for emergency like someone in the family suddenly fallen sick, or paying for children books or other expenditures incurred in extra curriculum activities.
But now to obtain a loan from the co-operatives,they had to fill in many forms and wait for days,or weeks,or months to know the result of the application.

In the end, the fishermen went back to "blood suckers" willingly. It was not clear what were the functions of the co-operatives all these years after the fishermen abandoned them. If they were doing their job, the minister would not have hit out at the middlemen the way he did. He was obviously not happy with the situation.

If the minister is thinking of asking the fishermen to man their stalls after returning from the sea, then he should leave his air-contioned office and go down to the field and get his feet wet.

The fishermen have a lot of chores to attend to, cleaning up their boats so that they do not stint; remove tiny fishes and sea-shells which are stuck to the nets, wash and mend the holes in the nets. They have not much time left for the stalls.

If the selling of the fisherman's catch are left to the officers in government owned agencies, it will surely fail. The officers would not care to do a good job, they will say, "Kerja tak kerja, gaji jalan juga."

As regards to the suggestion for the fishermen to get involved with fishing related business like ice factories, fishing boat servicing and value added fish products, the same applied. They do not have time, these business need a lot of attention, even experienced businessmen also shun away from these businesses. Moreover, from where do they get the capital? Provide them with easy loans? Come on, don't lead them into heavy debts as a result if these ventures fail.