Fisheries Observer: Increase Knowledge Of Land Certificate Program

Farmers feed vanamei shrimp in a pond in Singajaya Village, Indramayu, West Java. (Photo: ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Fisheries observer who is also the Executive Director of the Center for Maritime Studies for Humanity Abdul Halim wants a program to increase awareness of the land rights certificate program for fish cultivators (Pre-Health) considering that many do not know how.

"There are so many (cultivators in various regions who want to get certificates for their cultivated land), but due to limited information, they are ultimately not taken care of," said Abdul Halim in Jakarta, Thursday.

According to him, the issue of legality of cultivated land is an urgent obstacle to be overcome.

For this reason, he continued, the aspect of assistance to cultivators who want to apply for certificates must be addressed and it is also necessary to ensure the issuance of legal documents and their submission to land owners free of charge or at no cost.

Abdul Halim also agreed that various relevant institutions or ministries must improve their performance in relation to this issue. Moreover, at this time it is also often found that there is a lack of synchronization of work programs between the central and regional parties.

Previously, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) collaborated with the Ministry of Agrarian Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN) to help fish cultivators obtain the legality of their land certificates through a number of technical guidance.

The Director General of Cultivation Fisheries of KKP Tb Haeru Rahayu in his statement in Jakarta, Saturday 11 June, said that KKP has been working with the Ministry of ATR/BPN in implementing community land empowerment activities since 2013.

He said that one of the KKP programs that synergized with the Community Land Empowerment Program from the Ministry of ATR/BPN was the Pre-Health Program.

The program is an integrated and continuous activity in the context of providing pre-certification, certification, and asset access subjects and objects to economic sources, production, and post-certification markets.

"The expected benefit from the Pre-Health activity is to prepare aquaculture land that meets the requirements according to the criteria so that the issuance of certificates of land rights can be processed. This is done to obtain legality of land rights owned and can then be used as collateral for loans to banks and other sources of financing for fish farming business activities," he said.

He explained that the Pre-Health preparation was carried out in coordination with the local government and subsequently proposed to BPN to participate in certification activities.

According to him, the Sehatkan activity is an activity that also supports the KKP's breakthrough program, namely the development of aquaculture village based on local wisdom, which is a poverty alleviation program while at the same time maintaining the extinction of commodities with high economic value.