Come next year and fish workers will be spared of the ordeal of making countless visits to offices for their many benefits. For, by then the Fisherfolk Family Register (FFR), a comprehensive database of all active fish workers complete with the details of their family members and dependants, will be verified and uploaded on the portal Fisheries Information Management System (FIMS), which will in due course emerge as the one-stop shop for everything related to the fishing community. The FFR and FIMS, designed by the National Informatics Centre for the Fisheries Department, were launched by Fisheries Minister J. Mercykkutty Amma here on Friday. The details of 2.21 lakh out of the 3.90 lakh fish workers in the State registered with the Kerala Fishermen’s Welfare Fund Board (KFWFB) have been uploaded on the FIMS so far. Out of these, the details of 1.82 lakh have been verified and approved by the fisheries officers concerned. The entire database will be ready by the end of this year. Fishermen will now be able to renew their KFWFB membership and avail of various benefits online, S. Gopakumar, Deputy Director (Statistics), Fisheries Department, told The Hindu. Exhaustive databank The databank is so exhaustive that the fisheries officer concerned will be able to locate a particular beneficiary or his family members by keying in any of the following details: name, mobile number, Aadhaar number, KFWFB registration number or member ID. Gradually, the data regarding fishing vessels, various benefits and 30-odd schemes available to the fishing community will be added to the portal, said Mr. Gopakumar. The verification process entailing FFR will also help to sift out ineligible and inactive members registered with the KFWFB. They will not be immediately removed but retained as a separate list and will be given an opportunity to establish the genuineness of their membership and renew it. Out of the 2.21 lakh fishermen registered in the FFR, 1.27 lakh were marine fishermen and 19,754 were inland fishermen. Besides, there were 51,735 allied workers and 22,515 pensioners.
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