After agriculture, fishing is the most important occupation in Odisha. The fishing community in the State is very large but very poor. Surprisingly, the State Government has no policy for small fishermen, said the speakers on Saturday.
Speaking at a State-level consultation on “Voluntary Guidelines for securing Sustainable Small Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication in India,” organised by the East Coast Fish Workers Union, World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers and IMSE, senior journalist Rabi Das said like agricultural products fishing products should have a minimum support price (MSP). Presently, the small fishermen do not have storage facilities to store or refrigerated vans to transport their produce.
While big businessmen are getting crores of rupees as subsidy for subsidy from the centre for their plants and other equipments small fishermen do not have that advantage. So they should be financially included, he said. In 2012-13, the State produced 410 million tonnes of fish out of which 210 million tonnes was from inland production and the rest was marine production.
Another speaker, Biplab Halim, said the big companies bring disaster for small fishermen. The trawlers are coming inshore and catching fish. The small scale fishers are facing challenges due to overexploitation of resources and threats to ecosystems due to pollution and unfair ever increasing competition from coastal and marine resources by big industries. The other sectors include tourism, aquaculture, agriculture, energy, mining, industry and infrastructure developments.