Corona infection concerns during winter fishing: Industry met with Fisheries Minister Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen – NRK

There are only weeks until the traditional cod fishing begins.

But this year’s winter fishing is associated with great uncertainty about whether seasonal workers who tend to enter the country are coming and whether they have been adequately screened for corona infection.

Usually several thousand seasonal workers come to Lofoten, Vesterålen and Sør-Troms from other countries.

But these countries now have a lot of heart disease. The fear is that workers will spread the infection to small municipalities in the north.

– It is catastrophic if there are local outbreaks during winter fishing, says John Danielsen, mayor of Øksnes municipality.

Fish farmer fears infection spells the end

Øksnes is the largest fishing municipality in Norway. 300 seasonal workers are expected here alone in a short time.

– We must put this in place immediately. The first have already started to arrive, says Danielsen.

The industry fears the hook in the door of outbreaks and quarantine will be the case.

If you have to shut down the fishing in the middle of winter for ten days, it’s actually the end for some companies, general manager Jonas Walsøe at Berg Seafood AS in Lofoten tells NRK.

Municipal chiefs in the area have shouted warnings and wanted to say that the government should come to the fore with stricter border controls.

– All facilities depend on the incorporation of labor. The reason foreigners are mainly because Norwegians have not been interested in or have not managed to get into that kind of work for three months, says Walsøe.

Will close the borders

– What we need now is for the State to carry out border controls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without delay. We also need better opportunities to implement quarantined hotels, says Øksnes Mayor John H. Danielsen.

The Bodø municipal chief will take you even further.

– Close the borders as much as possible, says the municipal chief doctor Tor Claudi in Bodø to NRK.

Claudi in Bodø fears that he will find himself in a situation that the health service will not be able to cope with. He points out that countries that have had good infection control in the last period have also had strict border control.

– It is not about whether there will be infection, but how much it will arrive and what opportunities we have to limit this, he says.

Along the Swedish border in the interior, Trøndelag and Nordland, the National Guard controls the border and controls people. But not all day.

– Neither we nor the police have data in this regard, but we hope that many will come outside of opening hours. There are those who arrive in Lofoten and Vesterålen without an employment contract and without any quarantine plan. There are many reasons for concern about that, Claudi believes.

Encourage unemployed Norwegians to sign up

The fishing industry now demands immediate measures to ensure a secure workforce for cod fishing. They are targeting the government.

Today they met with the Minister of Fisheries in Bodø. He is also aware that the infection of workers entering the country will create big problems.

– It will be fatal to stop production and operations in the middle of a peak season like this, says Fisheries Minister Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen (H) to NRK.

The minister says that there are several agencies that are now working together to find good measures ahead of the season.

He agrees with Walsøe in Lofoten, who has long called for layoffs in the tourism industry to land a job in the fishing industry.

The Minister of Fisheries encourages registration of both the unemployed and the laid-off in Norway.

– We hope that part of the labor need can be solved by unemployed Norwegians who get work in Lofoten and Vesterålen now in the high season, says Ingebrigtsen