Good income attracts workers

Mangalore, Nov. 21: Sujan Sarkar, a Bengali, has been working on a fishing boat in Mangalore for the last three years. He arrived in the town after friends from
Orissa told him that the prospects were better in Mangalore than in Shantipur, West Bengal, where he was working on a boat at the time. He has no regrets about coming
all the way down south for the job, finding that it does pay as much as he anticipated.
“I have been working here for the past three years and am happy,” he says, explaining that while in West Bengal he had received a salary, here he is given a percentage of the day’s catch, which allows him to send home much better earnings. But to ensure that he doesn’t get into trouble with the law Sujan always carries his voter’s identity card on him.
Sanjay Kumar of Orissa, who has also been working in Mangalore for the past three years, comes from a farming
background, but decided to go into fishing because he felt he could earn more this way.
“I worked on boats in Goa for some time before coming to Mangalore,” he says, revealing that there are about a 150 fishermen from Orissa in Mangalore.
“We spend about eight to 10 hours at sea. Sometimes we get a good catch and are able to make Rs 1,000 a day. But some days we return empty handed,” he says.
The workers cook and sleep on their boats. Many like Sujan work in Mangalore for about nine months and go home during the monsoon, when there is a ban on fishing. They return once fishing resumes.
None of the fishermen have had any problem with the local people, who, fortunately for them, have been both welcoming and helpful.