The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) has said it is committed to prioritizing restorative justice or the administrative penalty in dealing with violations of maritime and fishery regulations.

“Beyond changing the overseeing procedures (for natural resources), there will also be a shift in imposing the penalty on fishery lawbreakers by prioritizing administrative penalty, but not eliminating criminal penalty,” director general of maritime and fisheries natural resource observation, Adin Nurawaluddin, said in an official KKP broadcast on Wednesday.

To this end, a criminal penalty will continue to be imposed on any perpetrator who commits a heavy violation, he informed.

The subject of imposing an administrative penalty on those found violating the maritime and fishery regulation has been discussed in detail during the dissemination of Observation of Fishery Resources in Implementing Law No. 11 of 2020 regarding Job Creation, he said. Imposing the administrative penalty has become an important policy under the current Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, to improve compliance with the law, he added.

“The point of imposing the administrative penalty is to enforce the law using the restorative justice approach, where the penalty application prioritizes reparation for what the perpetrator has broken,” Nurawaluddin explained.

Meanwhile, director of KKP’s fishery resource management observation, Drama Panca Putra, said observation in the future would be conducted not just by the central government, but also by regional governments, the Special Economic Zone Administrator, and the Management Agency for the Free Trade Zone and Free Port.

He said his office will follow the applicable norms, standards, guidelines, and criteria.

Putra also explained that the implementation of the administrative penalty will be done using the applicable law.

One of the laws that serves as a guideline for this is the Government Regulation (PP) No. 85 of 2021 that dictates the amount of the penalty to be imposed, he informed.

Source: Antara News