Emotions ran high and dramatic scenes were witnessed on Friday morning at the Poonthura and Vettukad fishing hamlets in Kerala’s capital district, Thiruvananthapuram, as hundreds of people, mainly women, from the fishing community blocked roads protesting the inefficiency and apathy shown allegedly by official agencies in bringing home over 200 fishermen trapped in the turbulent sea under Cyclone Ockhi. They had gone to sea on Wednesday evening.
“We don’t want your money. We don’t want your pensions. We don’t want you to give us anything. Just bring our husbands and brothers back for this time and then you can forget about us,” a fisherwoman at Poonthura shouted at former chief minister Oommen Chandy of the Congress as he reached there on Friday morning.
The fishing community complained that the entire official machinery was considering them as “second or third class citizens. They pointed out that the authorities were not even aware of how many fishermen had been stranded in the sea or how many had returned though relief dawned among them by Friday evening as most of the fishermen were brought back.
“It is now 9.30 in the morning. No official person has reached here so far. We saw a man floating on a log out there in this choppy sea. We informed the authorities about this at 6.00 AM. Not even a policeman has come here so far to inquire about that. We can’t see that man now. Some say he just floated away,” said 45-year-old fisherman Alphonse.
“Where are the MinistersIJ Where is the GovernmentIJ Is there an official hereIJ Why doesn’t the District Collector do an on-the-spot situation reviewIJ” fisherwoman Rosamma fumed. “This wouldn’t have been the case if something like this happened to other sections of the people. Is it that they can do anything to us, the poor fishermenIJ” she asked.
That the authorities had no estimate of how many people were stranded at sea and how many had come back was not perhaps a statement triggered by high-running emotion. Even Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan admitted at a Press meet, “It is impossible to give an exact number of the people trapped in the sea. What we know is that there are several of them.”
While the Government confirmed in the morning that 71 persons were missing and 35 had been rescued in the joint operations by Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force, the people in the fishing hamlets said at least 200 had been stranded and that was the truth. They said a minimum of 40 boats had gone to sea from Poonthura alone.
Traditional fishermen said they themselves would go in country boats to the furious sea by disregarding the alert issued by the authorities in search of the stranded people as “the administration seems to be a totally inefficient or unwilling.” There were unconfirmed reports that 14 fishermen had left the shore in small boats to find their brothers.