Fishing villages near Pulicat Lake ban entry of politicians

Fishing villages near Pulicat Lake ban entry of politicians
Published Date: 8/4/2009 - (NIE)

G Saravanan

Chennai, April 7: MORE than 25,000 traditional fishermen living in 17 different fishing hamlets along the Pazhaverkadu (Pulicat lake) stretch near the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border, have resolved on Tuesday, not to allow any politicians to visit their areas for votes until and unless their perennial problem of monetary compensation is solved.

For the last four decades, whenever the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launches its rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, these fishermen were restrained from going to sea citing security reasons. However, they never received any compensation from the government for the losses they incurred.

“As such orders from district authorities force us to stay home during the rocket launch periods, we have been demanding that the state government fix a compensation of Rs 200 per day to help us make both ends to meet during such lean days,” said Mahendran, a fishermen from Lighthouse Kuppam.

Once again, on Friday last, the district administration ordered these fishermen not to venture for catch till April 15 as a launch of PSLV –12 is scheduled in the next few days. “Traditional fishermen like us, who depend solely on daily fishing for livelihood using catamaran and small fibre boats, pay the price for living very close to the space centre,” Kuppan, a fishermen from Koraikuppam told Express.

Barring the usual 45-day fishing ban period from mid-April and inclement weather conditions, a traditional fisherman (using catamaran or small fibre boats) in the area goes to fish for only about 100 days in a year.

Due to the ISRO-enforced fishing bans, an average of 50 days are lost every year and the State government never thought of compensating these 25,000-odd fishermen who are left without food, K Bharathi, president of South Indian Fishermen Welfare Association (SIFWA) said.

Falling under the Ponneri Assembly segment and in the newly created Tiruvallur Parliamentary Constituency, these fishermen on Monday had a marathon meeting among themselves to chalk out strategy to seek government’s attention on the continuing issue, but it ended inconclusively.On Tuesday, during a meeting coordinated by SIFWA office-bearers, it was decided to ban the entry of politicians to their (17) fishing hamlets as they came to them only during elections.