Coral Imports from Fiji shutdown!

[BeltwayBandit]

Here is the thread on RC.  I haven't finished it yet, but it appears that some CITES issues haven't been addressed.  This also is affecting live rock shipments it appears too.

 

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=264309

 

BB

[BeltwayBandit]

Here is Walt Smith's take:

 

From the inside …….

A few people have asked me to comment on this thread and I am happy to share what I know so far.

It is true that Fiji has been shut down for an undetermined amount of time. Fiji has been given one deadline after another to get an important piece of legislation in place and for one reason or another that has had some difficulty getting to the table. The main reason is that the official in charge is completely incompetent and felt that if he just ignored the responsibility it would just go away. In fact he does not know how to work his email and when someone else from government stepped in to try and help he found over 200 messages that were unopened from C.I.T.E.S. warning him of the impending deadlines. This is no joke ….. that’s just how silly this whole thing is! It is no wonder that C.I.T.E.S. finally gave up and imposed their final deadline which was October 31, 2003.

This is not the fault of the exporters, we did our job and supplied all of the information required to set the quota and report our exports while everything was in compliance with the exception of this one piece of paper that is supposed to come from someone who can’t even spell regulation let alone communicate about one.

Amazingly enough once this person left the country on government business another person stepped in and got the job done. However, it was not done in time enough to meet the deadline but just the day before the deadline. What happens next is that today Parliament will meet to approve the legislation (reliable word has it that they will) and it will be published in the Gazette (government paper) on Friday and once C.I.T.E.S. sees this they will lift the ban. Two things can happen here to spoil this 1) Parliament may want to delay the process by asking for more time to review it, I was told that this was unlikely 2) C.I.T.E.S. could take their sweet time to lift the ban to teach Fiji a lesson, also unlikely (I hope).

If all goes well everything should be back to normal next week. A few things in some of these post I need to clear up. No, I am not in Fiji right now as was mentioned and Fiji has never been shut down yet, not even for a week as someone has suggested that it happens every year about this time.

One piece of good news is that my cultured rock is still ok to bring in and we have a very big load coming in tomorrow and this could be a very good time to finally take a look at some very nice rock, if I don’t say so myself (plug, plug).

I hope this clears up some of your questions or prevents any silly rumors from getting out of hand like I’m in a Fiji jail eating rats for the rest of my life.

Take care all and I will pray for the future of a business I have worked so hard for and the 350+ employees that have families depending on me for their daily bread. Fiji has it hard enough right now without this hitting their economy.

Cheers,

Walt