The community head explained that the fish centre asks for Le10,000 per crate to smoke raw fish and the oven takes about eight trays of fish, which uses quite an amount of wood to dry, which takes almost an hour, and as a result the high heat from the wood fire weakens the fish trays used to smoke the fish, putting an additional cost on the management committee to be replacing fish trays.
He called on government through the fisheries ministry to attract more support to transform fish processing centres from wood to gas or electric smoking, which will be more cost effective, clean, easy to use and environment friendly.
Mr Mansaray also furthered that using wood to process fish is exposing them to health hazards, and if electric or gas is used, it will increase more production of smoked fish, thus reducing loss on fish traders, especially when fishermen come in late or the early hours of the morning.
Apart from improving the environment at fish processing centres, the Tombo community head appealed that a modern cold room be established which will also assist to ease pressure on fish processing centres, and increase quality in process of fish preservation to meet European market