Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative Department is organising a two-day State level Fish Festival from Thursday. The festival, to be inaugurated by CM Raghubar Das, will showcase achievements of fishermen and activities being run by the Government to encourage fisheries in the State since last one year and a half.
The event is expected to welcome more than 20,000 fish farmers from the State, who would share their stories and take success stories of others back home to implement, said Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative Department Minister Randhir Kumar Singh on Wednesday.
Matsya Mitra, seed producers, para fish, hatchery professionals, cooperatives active in fisheries and allied services are expected to participate in festival.
“We have tried a lot to make Jharkhand do better than many other States of the country, and it has begun to deliver as well. The basic motto of this event is to make fish-farmers, and others associated with fish farming, to understand and get familiar with modern technologies available and being adopted in other parts of the country. They will also learn about facilities being made available by Government for them,” said Singh.
He added that the two-day event was also important in the way that it would lead all stakeholders including the Government to decide what had been the outcome of plans being implemented so far, and the way forward. “We have enough reasons to believe that Jharkhand is going to become fish exporter from next financial year (2017-18), as we will achieve the target of domestic consumption matching production by the end of current financial year (2016-17),” Singh added.
Director of Fisheries Rajiv Kumar said that the State had outlined a target of 1.4 Crores Metric Tons (MT) of fisheries production (which is also the exact number of current fish consumption of the State), and 425 Crores of fish-seed production. According to latest data available with the Government, the State has achieved 403 Crores of fish-seed production so far.
The two day event will have stalls of fish feed, seed and medicine companies, fish farmer training centre, Fish Research centre, Jhascofish, NFDB Hyderabad, and respective directorates of Animal Husbandry, Milk Development, Gardening and Soil Conservation depicting their achievements. A food court with over 30 stalls of fish platters would also captivate visitors.
The festival, being organised at Vidhansabha Ground (Dhurva) will have anything and everything related to fisheries to showcase, other than quiz competitions and awards for fishermen and Matsya Mitra. CM will distribute cheque to beneficiaries of group insurance and different types of grants.