It has been a good week here in PNG. The FAO – PSMA workshop included over 50 people from all the line agencies that are involved in the process of having fishing vessels arriving into a port. While well hosted by NFA (the Fisheries Authority) it included ports authority, customs, maritime safety, quarantine, navy and maritime police. Since all these organisations have a role and a mandate over the process.
lets go on board
The team from FAO that run it is top notch Pio Manoa is Fijian lawyer that is now based in Rome after working for FFA, the USP and many others, we had also Matthew Camilleri who has been FAO PSMA master for a few years now and is at helm of the advances over the last few years. It has been a pleasure to be working with both of them and I hope they enjoyed working with me.
The logistics were clever with not a lot of presentations, but a lot of interactions, working groups and visits to vessels in Raboul lagoon
we still on paper, but not for long :-)
I think that everyone got some really positives inputs and lot to think on the way home, yet on the other side our work with the CDS has incorporated a lot of the PSM principles already.
I talked many times about how fascinating and challenging is to work in PNG, I been coming here for 19 years, which is almost half the history of the country… 800 cultures trying to strengthen their identity as a nation implies a lot of challenges. Therefore challenges are nothing new for PNG, I always joke that here in PNG we have challenges for breakfast! An my local colleagues will, as always rise to the challenge, in their own way
What a place for a group picture