An official from Quang Tri Province's Department of Health takes fish samples for testing at a warehouse freezer in Vinh Linh District in September. Photo by PL TPHCM
Vice director of the provincial department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nguyen Van Huan said that the fish were bought from local fishermen between March and August this year.
"We've checked and found out that 200 tonnes have gone stale which will be destroyed," Huan said, adding that they will try to help local wholesale dealers to sell the rest soon."
The official also said that they will destroy all the unsold frozen seafood in the next two weeks to make sure that fish sold in the local market is safe.
So far the province has destroyed around 53 tonnes of seafood which are spoilt due to being left unsold for a long time or were found to be phenol-contaminated following the environmental disaster caused by the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation in late April.
Many wholesale dealers said that they had lost a lot of money preserving the fish.
Nguyen Van Nang, owner Gai Nang Seafood Processing Plant at Cua Viet Town said that they now have some eight tonnes of fish unsold and were paying about VND1 million every month on electricity to preserve the useless stock.
"I've borrowed lots of money from the bank to buy the fish," Nang said. "And as I've been unable to sell them, I'll have to borrow more."
Chairman of Quang Tri Province’s People’s Committee, Nguyen Duc Chinh confirmed that compensation for unsold fish would be handed out before the Lunar New Year, which falls at the end of January.
Quang Tri Province has handed out around VND202 billion (USD8.9 million) from government funds to owners of fishing boats and their employees.
Besides Quang Tri Province, fishermen in the central provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue were also hit by mass fish deaths following the Formosa toxic sea spill.
On December 10, authorities in Quang Binh also destroyed over 600 tonnes of cadmium-contaminated fish. Due to the low sales of seafood after the environmental disaster, the province has some 4,000 tonnes of frozen fish sitting unsold in freezers.
In Ha Tinh, there are 2,000 tonnes of fish stored in 42 freezer warehouses. Ha Tinh authorities are conducting tests on the frozen fish to determine how to properly destroy them later.
According to Ha Tinh’s department of industry and trade, a 100 per cent subsidy will be provided for those fish found to have been contaminated, while a 30 per cent subsidy rate will be applied to uncontaminated fish that needed to be destroyed.
