Draft regulations initiated by the Kutai Fishery Agency
Draft Regulation on Fishery Levy
The demand to make the Draft Regulation on Fishery Levy originated from a call made by the Secretariat Office of the Kutai District government in 2005 asking all agencies to find as many potential local revenue sources as possible.8 Incidentally, a senior staff member of the Fisheries Agency joined a 2005 comparative study trip of the Kutai District government in Banyuwangi District in East Java.
During the study trip, the senior staff member was informed that in Banyuwangi District there was a local regulation concerning a Local Fisheries Levy. On the basis of this information and in response to the call of the Secretariat Office, a year later, a legal drafting team was appointed by the head of the Fisheries Agency to prepare the draft regulations for Kutai District.9The drafting committee of the Regulation on Local Fishery Levy hardly listened to the input from target groups. To prepare the drafts the appointed members of the legal drafting team relied heavily on their own knowledge. They conducted four or five internal meetings to share this knowledge. The team gathered input from outside by conducting two comparative studies, one in Banyuwangi District of Central Java, and one in Pasir District, a southern district of East Kalimantan province. Those two comparative study trips took place in 2006.
Each of these study trips offers some interesting stories. The agency chose Banyuwangi District because the above-mentioned senior staff member had visited the region in 2005. However, during the 2006 comparative study they were surprised to be informed that to be able to collect fishery levy, the Agency should first construct a so-called fish auction (Tempat Pelelangan Ikan or TPI) and fish port (Pangkalan Pendaratan Ikan or PPI). At that time, the Kutai District government had neither.
Having learned about this condition, the Fisheries Agency changed its priorities and took the first steps to build the two required public facilities. Meanwhile, the comparative study trip to Pasir District took place towards the end of 2006 (22-26 December). The fact that the last two days of the study coincided with the Christmas holidays raises the question of how effective it was. Indeed, it had no influence on subsequent events.The content of the Kutai Draft Regulation on Fisheries Levy is a continuation ofwhat was stipulated in Regulation 34/2000 and 37/2000. As already mentioned, these two regulations required that any transported and traded shrimp and milkfish seeds, as well as processed fish products, had to undergo a quality test. The products that would pass would receive a certificate issued by the Fisheries Agency. These two regulations did not oblige fishermen, farmers, or traders to pay a levy if they passed the test and received the certificate. The Kutai Draft Regulation on Fishery Levy stipulated that any quality test followed by a certificate should be completed with a levy payment. The making of this draft did end up with the enactment of a regulation on fishery levy. Nevertheless, in 2011 the District government enacted Regulation 19/2011 concerning general regional levies. One of the levies in the Regulation is the fishery levy.
Draft Regulation on Fishing
A demand to revise Kutai Regulation 3/1999 on Fishing arose when the implementation of the regulation turned out to be ineffective. Many small-scale fishermen complained about large-scale fishermen who used prohibited equipment such as trawl nets in the 0-3 nautical mile zone. They also used trawl during the day which is against a traditional fishery custom, prescribing that trawl shall be used at night only. Besides the use of trawl, there were complaints about other destructive fishing practices, such as the use of chemical, poisonous, and explosive substances. The small fishermen also tried to curb the destructive fishing practices by warning and sometimes expelling the fishermen concerned, but the latter contested the legitimacy of such actions.
Aware of not having any legal grounds to rely on, the small fishermen asked the officials of the Fisheries Agency to revise the prevailing legislation in order to allow them to take action against those breaking the law.Like the Draft Regulation on Fishery Business, the making of the Draft Regulation on Fishing also included a comparative study trip as well as consulting with related ministries and with the Legal Bureau of the provincial government. However, the drafting process also engaged affected groups by conducting serial discussions with fishing and farming communities. In addition, the appointed Legal Drafting Team held five internal meetings. All of the above-mentioned activities took place in 2008.
The comparative study trip went to Pati district of Central Java Province. Consultation with ministries and the Legal Bureau of the Provincial government aimed to get input concerning three matters. First, how to properly revise Kutai Regulation 3/1999. Second, how to make a local regulation in a short period of time. Third, how to draft a local regulation which would not contradict higher national regulations.
Regarding consultation with fishing and farming communities as potentially affected groups, it was initially proposed to gather input from fishing and farming communities in two ways, namely by a survey and a series of discussions. Yet the survey was cancelled due to time constraints and the fact that the model that was supposed to be used to develop a questionnaire for the survey somehow disappeared. Due to budgetary restraints, the Fisheries Agency could only organise one discussion in each of the six sub-districts. The available budget for each sub-district was only US$1,000. Each meeting lasted for 2 to 2.5 hours with around 30 participants on average.
Even though there were no systematic minutes of the six discussions, the team members assumed that they would manage to take into account the input from the participants of the meetings.
However, as an official of the Kutai Fisheries Agency who was the secretary of the team commented:If the input from the fishermen and farmers differs from the agency's view, the team will use the agency's view. That is because the agency's view is scientific while the input from the fishermen and farmers is unscientific given that they are less well-educated.
The halting of the drafting process was connected with the situational mood of the Fishery Agency officials who at the time of the drafting process were in high spirits given that they had just moved to a new office. It explains why there was no unit within the Fisheries Agency, which was willing to take responsibility for continuing the drafting.
After a one-year program was run in 2008, the drafting process of this regulation ceased altogether. A lower member of staff of the agency who was in charge of the draft and who acted also as a Secretary of the Legal Drafting Team actually set up a program proposal for 2009. Through the program, he projected to accomplish a final draft in 2009, which was to be sent to the Legal Bureau of the Kutai District government. He believed that the process in the Legal Bureau would not take long given that the Secretary of the Fisheries Agency was known to be capable of lobbying the Legal Bureau officials. Yet his superior rejected and later fully cancelled the program proposal. This superior was thought to have done so because he was about to move to another agency and he probably felt that he would not benefit from the draft regulation agenda.
Ideas to continue the formulation of the Draft Regulation on Fishing rose again in 2010. In the same way as the previous year, the lower member of staff prepared a program proposal. Yet this time it was unclear whether his new superior passed the program proposal on to the Head of Division, because he suspected that the latter was not interested— unhappy as he was with his new position because he used to be assigned to another division of the Agency where his main task was to handle issues related to the marketing of fish products.
Recognising that the drafting process was stagnant, the Agency Head suggested to the lower member of staff to continue the process by only inserting minor points of revision, such as adding the new name of the district to the draft. Yet the lower member of staff refused to do so, given there was no budget allocation for the minor revision.In the same year that the preparing of the Kutai Draft Regulation on Fishing commenced, a proposal to continue the preparing of the Kutai Draft Regulation on Fisheries Levy appeared. The proposal came from another division of the Fisheries Agency. As now there were two proposals, the Agency Head decided to prioritise the Kutai Draft Regulation on Fishing. It is not clear why the Agency Head came up with that decision, yet the membership composition of the Legal Drafting Team suggests that it was a compromise between four various divisions of the Agency. Not only did they have to revise Kutai Draft Regulation 3/1999 on Fishing, but the Team also had to revise three other Kutai Regulations: 34/2000, 36/2000, and 37/2000.