Due to periodic ban on fishing in the sea on account of turtle protection and conservation more than 3 lakh traditional marine fishermen living in 480kms long stretch, spread over 284 fishing villages under six coastal districts of the state of Orissa are living in uncertain future.
In Kendrapara district alone seven fishermen have died attempting suicide and four others have been mentally disabled. All these happened because of the fishing ban on 65 kms. Along Gahiramatha coast of the district, says, Konda Alleya, General Secretary, Orissa 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 alternative 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 as 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, though government spends crorers in the name of Turtle Conservation, the local community are not being 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 recognize 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 OMRCC-UAA.
In addition to this land rights have been another critical are 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 coastal fishermen not stopped 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 have to be financed by both central and state government, 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 1st November to 31ST May, government has banned fishing. As a result of which thousands of fishermen have been deprived from venturing into the sea for more than 7 months in a year, thus living with an uncertain future and semi-starving condition.
To bail out, fishing communities from this trap, Orissa Traditional Marine Fish Workers Union (OTFWU) had lodged a strong complain with CEC (Central Empowered Committee) formed by Supreme Court and CEC had recommended to compensate fishermen for this 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 coastal fishermen is fishing by unauthorized Trawlers from Andhra, Bengal, Bangladesh and Thailand fishing in Orissa coast, violating Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification, Orissa Maritime Fishing Regulation Act (OMFRA). But government has been the silent spectator to all these violations. Though Union government has sanctioned Rs. 2 crores to construct two Speed Boats for patrolling inside Sea and final amount of Rs. 32 lakhs recently, there seems to be no headway on this.
Whereas, government has failed to implement CRZ notification, they are now keen to implement 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, mal -functioning 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 three days long dharana and rally during last year’s assembly session from 21st to 23rd November to press for their demand, fortunately state fisher minister had visited dharana 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 done yet.
That’s why, 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 banned nets inside sea and has declared that the organization and marine fisher people will go on strike.