A lawmaker has accused the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) of withholding vital vessel-tracking data, leaving local governments and law enforcers blind while commercial ships illegally raid municipal fishing grounds.

Representative Kaka Bag-ao of Dinagat Islands filed a resolution in the House of Representatives on Monday to compel the bureau to submit a status report on its Vessel Monitoring Measures and explain why tracking information is not being shared.

Bag-ao said that from 2017 to 2026, Congress allocated P10.25 billion to the bureau for monitoring and surveillance systems under the amended Fisheries Code.

The systems were designed to prevent commercial vessels from encroaching on the 15-kilometer zone reserved exclusively for small-scale, marginal fishers.

“BFAR is not lacking in capacity; BFAR is withholding action,” Bag-ao said during a privilege speech. “They are letting local government units and law enforcers be blind to what is happening at sea because they refuse to share this data.”