Fish Industry in West Bengal in Troubled Waters -Shoma A Chatterji

-TheCitizen.in

Fish lovers in West Bengal may soon be threatened with a scarcity in the supply of fish or rise in price or both.

The fishermen and the trawler owners are very angry. Without giving a thought to the consequences of a continuous arbitrary rise in the price of diesel, petrol, kerosene and cooking gas by the central government has led to severe disbalance in the finance and employment sector in the indigenous shipping industry in West Bengal.

Add to this, the absence of subsidy for petrol the trawler owners, the fishermen and the allied workers were waiting for, which according to them, was ensured by the Central Government.

Bengal’s small-scale fisheries have an annual turnover of Rs 500 crore. The peak season for small-scale fishermen is between October and February and for large and medium-scale players it is between June and April.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the nationwide lockdown on March 23, 2020, all fishing activity came to a standstill. The trawlers that were still at sea had to hurry back with their catch but the smaller players were left holding nothing. The situation is graver today than it was during the lockdown.

According to a recent report, 10,000 of the total 15,000 trawlers in West Bengal have been forced to come to a halt because of the continuous spike in the price of diesel. The rise in price has not been overnight but has been going on for the past several months. 15,000 fishing trawlers are already there for fishing. Then, according to the leaders of associations in fishing and trawler businesses, the government fell back on its promise to implement a minimum support price to them.

Please click here to read more.