Kerala’s Marxist Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma on Sunday admitted that the Government did not know how many fishermen had been missing in Cyclone Ockhi even 18 days after the storm while the Police, Disaster Management and her own Fisheries Department put the number at around 300. She said the exact number could be known only by Christmas.
“Where did this number – 300 – come fromIJ The Government has not accepted it,” Mercykutty Amma told newsmen in Thiruvananthapuram. As per the estimates drawn up till Saturday by the three departments on the basis of the first information reports, 300 fishermen had gone missing in Arabian Sea following the cyclone that hit the Kerala coast on November 30.
The departments’ estimates’ say that FIRs have been registered about the missing of 72 fishermen from Thiruvananthapuram district and 32 from Kochi. Apart from these numbers, the cases of fishermen missing in which FIRs have not been registered are 13 in Kollam district and 83 in Thiruvananthapuram.
The number of deaths in Cyclone Ockhi in Kerala, according to the Government, is 60 and 40 bodies were yet to be identified. Informal estimates say that a minimum of 72 persons have been killed. The number of bodies found from the sea off the coast of Kozhikode alone stood at 22 as on Sunday.
The estimates of the Kerala latin Catholic Church, to which a large number of fishermen in Thiruvananthapuram district belong, about the number of missing fishermen differ in a big way from the official figure. The Church says that a minimum of 250 fishermen had gone missing from Thiruvananthapuram alone.
Minister Mercykutty Amma claimed that there was not much difference between the estimates of the Government and the Church as far as men who had gone in small boats. The Government did not have the exact number of fishermen who had gone in big boats but they were expected to be back only by Christmas, said the Minister.
“Even the families of these fishermen are expecting them by Christmas. When this is the situation, there is no point in drawing up estimates on them,” she added. However, a fishermen’s union leader in Kochi pointed out that the Government did not have a system by which details of the fishermen going to the sea on big boats could be known.