Fisheries stakeholders, ranging from scientists and researchers to owners of fishing boats, have appealed for calling off a memorandum of understanding between the government agency Kerala State Inland Navigation Corporation and a U.S.-based company to build 400 trawlers to be deployed off the Indian coast for deep sea fishing. Kerala Matsya Thozhilali Aikya Vedhi, a combine of fishers under the Left-leaning Trade Union Congress of India, organised a webinar to elicit opinion from the stakeholders on the issue. The president of the Aikya Vedhi pointed out that the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre had withdrawn the Meena Kumari Committee report on deep sea fishing following widespread protests from the fishing community. However, the State which was on the forefront of the protest against the committee, was following a path that was in the opposite direction, he said. The State government has not done proper homework when entering into an MoU for building fishing trawlers.
Sunil Mohammed, a retired scientist from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, was cited as expressing the opinion that though the fishing sector needed to be modernised it must done in a phased manner. Kumbalam Rajappan and Jackson Pollayil, representing fishers’ unions in the traditional sector, were among those who expressed their opinion against the MoU. KSINC sources had said when the controversy broke out that the MoU was for a major work order for the corporation, which had boat building facilities and that there was a confusion on the issue. The trawlers being built by the U.S. company may be deployed in other parts of India if there was a problem in Kerala.
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