Chennai: Fisheries sector in Tamil Nadu is facing the wrath of deficit in the North East monsoon last year, as the state is now witnessing a steep decline in the inland fish production.
According to the statistics put up by fisheries department, this year the inland fish production was only 1.97 lakh tones against the produce of 2.42 lakh tones, last year.
Officials from the fisheries department said he failure of north east monsoon during 2016 resulted in scarcity of water in all water bodies which affected inland fish production of the state. Meager rainfall received in the earlier southwest monsoon did not help the situation, which ultimately led the government to declare all 32 districts of Tamil Nadu as drought hit.Fisheries department said the state had 3.83 lakh hectares of effective inland water resources, which included reservoirs, major and minor irrigation tanks, ponds and short seasonal tanks and the potential of inland fisheries sector was estimated at 4.50 lakh tonnes during normal rainfall. While the state's total fish production in 2016-17 was about 6.69 lakh tones, about 79,400 tonnes of marine products worth Rs 3,914 crore were exported.In a move to provide benefits to fisherman, giving priority to those affected by Sri Lanka issue, the department, during the year 2017-18 had allocated Rs 286 crore as subsidy assistance for construction of 500
deepsea tuna long liners cum gill netters.
“The Centre will contribute Rs 200 crore while the rest will be the state's share. Fishermen will also get 70 per cent subsidy assistance for diversification of trawl fishing boats of Palk Bay into deep sea fishing boats. The Centre will contribute 50 per cent while the state will share 20 per cent,” the officials mentioned. Moreover, to improve the civil civil infrastructure under Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project (CDRRP), the World Bank has sanctioned Rs 321.30 crore.
