 A half-day meeting between Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastney, Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Hon. Ezekiel Joseph and representatives of the fishing sector has resulted in an amicable and unanimous position on the sector's role in helping protecting the nation's borders amid community spread of COVID-19. The meeting was convened to discuss the one-week suspension of fishing licenses as government-refined protocols for the sector. Acknowledging the importance of the fishing sector, its contribution to the local economy and food security, government has decided to allow fishers to resume their trade, however only between the hours of 4 a.m. and 7 p.m. daily. Captains or owners of fishing vessels must share information on the vessel with the marine police. The VG lighthouse must be furnished with all relevant information when a vessel is leaving port. No more than three people are allowed on board a vessel. We are going to continue revisiting the protocols that were set in April and in addition to that we are going to reduce on the hours that they are allowed to go to sea for the next three weeks, whilst we look at more medium to long-term solutions. Operations manager of Goodwill Fishermen's Cooperative Society, KG Anna Tussier-Charlie says the meeting was productive on many fronts. Most of the issues we were confronted with as a fisherfolk with the news of the week suspension I think were adequately able to exploit at the meeting and what we are most happy about is that our fisherfolk will be able to resume work in about a day so we're very happy about about that news. The statutory instrument containing the measures will be published on Wednesday 4th November 2020. The measures come into effect Thursday 5th November 2020.