Director of the Greater Accra Fisheries Commission has indicated the Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Ministry’s preparedness to distribute 40,000 facemasks to fishing communities to help the fight against Covid-19.

Michael Dadzie made this known during an interview on Adom FM’s Burning Issues current affairs show.

The Director shared other plans earmarked by his Ministry to ensure social distancing as Ghana’s Covid-19 cases continue to soar.

According to Michael Dadzie, the Ministry will distribute hand sanitisers as well as intensify education by dispatching information vans to coastal communities.

“ We are working frantically to get 40, 000 initial face mask to the fishing communities. We will add to this number as time goes on. We will add hand sanitizer as well to support fishers.

Currently, the Ministry is engaging some information centres within these communities to also add to the education on Covid-19,” Michael Dadzie stressed.

The Ministry also plans to create a miniature landing site to promote social distancing as the current landing beaches do not promote this protocol. The leadership of the inland fishing association called for proper registration of all canoes to make it easier to identify Ghanaian canoes from others.

The Association believes this will make it easy to monitor other foreign canoes that will stray into the Ghanaian waters. They called for other equipment like thermometers to help them check the fishermen’s temperature frequently.

“We don’t have the needed equipment to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. We don’t have the approved facemask and thermometers to check temperature. A lot of foreign canoes from Burkina Faso and Togo still patrol our waters. We need support as inland fishers,” Jacob Ageke Tettey, President of National Inland Canoe Fishermen Council explained.

The fisheries discussion on Burning Issues is supported by the European Union under the Far Ban Bo (Protecting the livelihood of fishers) Project in collaboration with Care International, Friends of the Nation and Oxfam.

The fisheries dialogue is a platform created to educate fishers on the Covid-19 pandemic and other fisheries-related issues.