Fishers in Karaikal-Mayiladuthurai-Nagapattinam belt have been enraged by the latest move by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Fisheries to distribute boats confiscated from Tamil Nadu fishermen to their counterparts in the island nation. The Fisheries Minister of Sri Lanka Douglas Devananda was quoted as saying that the trawlers confiscated from the fishermen who had trespassed from the Indian side of the maritime boundary in the Palk Bay would be distributed among the fishers in Sri Lanka.
“The statement was outrageous. The lack of adequate action from the Indian side to retrieve the confiscated boats in the past has led to this situation,” Mahendran, a fisher representative said. Delay in retrieval of the boats causes heavy damage to the idling vessels rendering them unusable, he said.
Tamil Nadu fishermen have been accused by their Sri Lankan counterparts of using bottom-trawling nets to catch fish in the Palk Strait, destroying rich fish-breeding areas. Earlier this year, 135 Indian fishing boats were auctioned in Jaffna, and bought by fishers in Jaffna, Mullathivu, Mannar, Puttlam and Negombo. A special virtual meeting with Tamil Nadu Fishermen organized by the Deputy High Commission of Sri Lanka in Chennai, in which about 10 representatives from Fisheries Associations in several districts of Tamil Nadu participated, to discuss the issue did not yeild the intended results.
Fishers of Tamil Nadu, for their part, had expressed concerns over prohibition of bottom trawling in the region, and auctioning of Indian boats in Sri Lanka. The stand being taken by Sri Lanka to justify the auctioning is that fishers in Tamil Nadu were not serious about retrieval of the confiscated boats during 2020, when an initiative was taken by the Indian High Commission in Colombo for restoration of the confiscated boats.