The fuel price hike has become another blow to over one lakh fishermen in Bhola, who are already in trouble for poor netting of hilsa after the end of the fishing ban in the Bay two weeks ago. After the announcement of the hike in diesel prices on Friday night, many fishermen abstained from going to the sea for fishing since Saturday morning due to the increased cost of fishing trawlers, resulting in a poor supply of fish in the wholesale fish markets of the district. Bhola district fisheries officer Molla Emdadullah said that the fishermen would suffer due to the fuel price hike.
Talking to the correspondent, fishermen said that now they could not catch sufficient hilsa in the rivers and the sea. With the netting of only two or four hilsa a day, it has become difficult for them to bear the expenses, and now the increased cost of fuel has pushed up the expenses, they said.
A medium-sized fishing trawler needs fuel worth Tk 3,000-4,000 a day and, in return, fishermen can catch fish worth Tk 1,500-2,000, they said. Visiting Tulatuli fish ghat in sadar upazila the correspondent found many fishermen kept their trawlers on the river banks instead of going to the sea and were worrying about their survival in this situation.
Fisherman Aminul said that he bought 10 litres of diesel at Tk 850 on Friday afternoon and went fishing in the river. But when he returned in the morning, he could sell fish worth only Tk 500. ‘At the same time, when I went to buy diesel, it became Tk 155 per litre,’ he said. According to the Bhola fisheries office, there are 1,44,000 registered fishermen in Bhola. Among them, 64,000 fishermen go to the sea for fishing. However, apart from the registered ones, there are about a few thousand more fishermen in the district.
Yunus, a fish wholesaler, said that he bought fish from 10 to 12 trawlers. Half of the trawlers stopped going to rivers and the sea for fishing as they barely got fish. ‘Meanwhile, not a single trawler has gone to the river since Saturday morning due to the hike in diesel prices,’ he said. The government hiked the price of fuel by a big margin on Friday. The diesel price has been increased by Tk 34 to Tk 114 per litre while the octane price has been hiked by Tk 46 to Tk 135 and petrol by Tk 44 to Tk 130.
Previously, the government raised the price of diesel and kerosene by Tk 15 to Tk 80 per litre in November of last year. As a result, the bus fare was disproportionately increased by around 27 per cent and the launch fare by 35 per cent.