Just recently the angling fraternity in South Africa released figures and stats that they had aquired through a very large study. This study revealed that RECREATIONAL FISHING was bigger in south Africa than rugby, football or cricket .
There is thus a very large recreational fishing fraternity in south Africa, and taxing the fisher folk is an easy mark for the government. An increase in recreational fishing permits is thus an easy and cheap way for the government to tax our recreational activity and collect revenue to ensure our sport is protected and that we as fisher folk have adequate and reasonable facilities that we may utilise.
The South African Government wishes to increase the costs of recreational fishing permits in excess of 200% and Info4u CC feels that this is outrageous and needs to be investigated at parlimentary level to determine the true costs and the accountability at parlimentary level of
a) how much money was collected in the past,
b) where the received revenue goes to
c) how the received revenue is spent.
d) who is accountable at national level
e) Who is accountable at Provincial level
f) who is acountable at district level
g) who is accountable at local municipality level
h) how much revenue does the governement expect to receive in the next year from recreational permits, and how was this figure calculated
i) What impacts this outrageous increase will have on our society at large,
J) What the impacts will be on tourism regions where fishing and the recreational use orf our renewable resources (fishing) and natural environment (camping) is the prime attraction.
Info4u requires a mandate from the people on the ground to be able to take these issues up at any level. This petition will in fact double as a mandate and a petition, which we will use as our point of entry.
Our objective is to start at the Mtubatuba Local Municipality and place our concerns about the potential loss of tourism due to the knock on effects of the increase in the cost to the public of making recreational use of the renewable natural resources (fishing) within our municipality and adjacent areas which include
- Umkhanyakude district Municipality
- iSimangaliso Wetland park (managedby iSimangaliso wetland Park Authority - IWPA)
- The Elephant Coast of KZN South Africa (Brand name for region)
- Hlabisa Local Municipalit
- Jozini Local Muncipality
- UMhlabu'yalingana local Municipality
- Big 5 False Bay Local municipality
Info4u thus requests your consent and approval of our concerns
