Marine fishermen Uncertain Future!
Due owing to periodic ban on
fishing in the sea on account of turtle protection and conservation more
than three lakh traditional marine fishermen living in 480-km-long
stretch, spread over 284 fishing villages under six coastal districts of
the state of Odisha, are living in uncertain future.
Coastal fishermen caught in duel
conflict of conservation and livelihood restoration are up in arms now.
Odisha, one of the largest fish-producing states, has been neglecting
its fisher folk, allege the community leaders.
In Kendrapara district only at least
seven fishermen have died attempting suicide and four others have been
mentally disabled. All these happened because of the fishing ban on 65
km along Gahiramatha coast of the district, says Konda Alleya, General
Secretary, Odisha Traditional Marine Fish Workers Union (OTFWU).
Not only this, thousands of marine
fishermen of Ganjam, Puri and Jagatsinghpur have migrated to Goa,
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Hyderabad in search of livelihood. Fisher
people of these districts are facing the wrath of local police and
forest department officials because of the fishing ban along the coastal
areas of Rushikuly, Devi and Jatadhari sea mouth and adjoining areas
during breeding seasons of Olive Ridley Turtles and declaration of these
areas “the marine sanctuary.”
While speaking to this correspondent
W Simadri, a fisherman from Rushikulya Rookery in Ganjam, said, “It is
the fisherman who protects and ensures safe passage of turtle hatchlings
to sea; government agencies are only supervising.”
Simadri further added that though
government spents crorers in the name of turtle conservation, the local
community was not involved. They pay only Rs. 90 per day for two months
to 10-20 persons of a fishing village of more than 300 families.
“It is pity to note that, government
is shying away to recognise community conservation efforts, though
thousands of fisher women and men are engaged in turtle conservation and
protecting biodiversity of the area, their livelihood issues are not
taken care”, says, Mangaraj Panda of Orissa Marine Resources
Conservation Consortium (OMRCC-UAA).
In addition to this, land rights
have been another critical area that has not been looked into by
successive governments. Though they have been living in coastal areas,
they have not been provided with land pattas of their ancestral land.
The never-ending agony of the
coastal fishermen does not stop here. During rainy season especially
from May to August, they are not allowed to venture into the sea owing
to breeding. Government has announced this period as a Lean Session and
to compensate fishermen a scheme called “Saving-cum-Relief” is in place
to be financed by both central and state governments, but because of
departmental apathy the scheme is not working well. In addition to this,
on account of the turtle nesting and breeding, every year from
November, to May 31, government has banned fishing. As a result,
thousands of fishermen have been deprived of venturing into the sea for
more than seven months in a year, thus living with an uncertain future
and semi-starving condition.
To bail out, fishing communities
from this vicious trap, Odisha Traditional Marine Fish Workers Union
(OTFWU) had lodged a strong complaint with the CEC (Central Empowered
Committee) formed by Hon’ble Supreme Court and CEC had recommended to
compensate fishermen for that period. To implement this fisheries
department had ordered through a letter vide no. 7fy-sch-30/2004, 10810,
14-7-2005. But still fishermen are not getting their due compensation
Apart from this, the major cause of
concern for the coastal fishermen is fishing by unauthorised trawlers
from Andhra, Bengal, Bangladesh and Thailand fishing in Odisha coast,
violating Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification, Orissa Maritime
Fishing Regulation Act (OMFRA). But the government has been the silent
spectator to all these violations. Though Union government has
sanctioned Rs. 2 crore to construct two speed boats for patrolling
inside the Sea and final amount of Rs. 32 lakh recently, there seems to
be no headway on this.
Whereas, the government has fail in
implement CRZ notification, they are now keen to implementing Coastal
Management Zone (CMZ) and have allowed Special Economic Zones (SEZ),
violating user access rights of traditional fishers and converting
agriculture lands into other purposes to corporate/ multinational
houses.
General problems like
non-availability primary health services, malfunctioning of educational
institutions, communication and transport facilities to marine fisher
populous villages, legal rights of fisher people over their homestead
land, insurance coverage of the productive assets of traditional fisher
people by the government are not adequately taken care of.
In this regard, more than 7000
marine fishermen had staged a three day-long dharna and a rally during
last year’s assembly session from 21to 23 November to press for their
demand. Fortunately, state fisher minister had the visited dharna and
had assured the delegates to solve the problem of traditional fisher
people. Before that Minister and fisher secretary had lengthy discussion
with the union leaders. But since then nothing has been done concrete
yet.
Therefore, OTFWU has warned the
government to immediately look into the genuine demands of thousands of
marine fishermen, otherwise they will be forced to resort seizure of
illegal trawlers and declared that the organisation and marine fisher
people will go on strike.
By Sudarshan Chhotoray from Bhubaneswar
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