KOCHI: Around 5,000 mechanised fishing boat operators and workers launched an indefinite strike on Thursday and stopped venturing into the sea in protest against the action launched by the state Fisheries Department against juvenile fishing. The mechanised boat owners decided to go ahead with the strike after talks with Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma failed to end the deadlock. The boat owners and workers have been on the warpath since the Fisheries Department seized two boats on February 4 on charges of juvenile fishing.
A group of boat workers allegedly attacked the Fisheries station at Vypeen and forcefully released the boats. The protesting boat operators took out a protest march to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Kochi. Kerala Boat Operators’ Association president Joseph Xavier Kalappurakkal, who inaugurated the march, claimed no mechanised boats ventured into the sea from the harbours in Kochi, Kollam and Beypore on Thursday.
Munambam coordination committee chairman C P Gireesh, convenor Rajeev, Fr Anthony Claret, from Tamil Nadu, and Congress mandalam committee president M J Tomy took part in the protest. “According to the international scientific community, a unilateral ban on juvenile fishing will not serve the purpose. Each fish species has a migrating pattern and the fish from the Indian Ocean travel through Kerala coast to reach the African coast. So if the mechanised boats in Kerala stop catching juvenile fish, fishermen of some other state or country will catch them.
The decision of the state government to impose fine on the fishing boats without even enacting a law is discriminatory,” said Joseph Xavier. He alleged the boat owners walked out of the meeting convened by Minister Mercykutty Amma as she was in support of the fisheries officers who harass the boat workers. “She said it was the boat workers who violated the rules. She also said the video evidence of the Vypeen Fisheries Station incident provided by us was fabricated. As many as 10 boat workers, arrested in connection with the incident, have been languishing in jail for the past 10 days. In these circumstances, we have stopped venturing into the sea,” said Joseph Xavier.