The Fisheries Coordination Committee is planning to build up a nationwide resistance to protest the Centre’s alleged move to open up deep sea fishing in India’s waters to multinational companies.

The committee, which is a collective of a dozen fishing trade unions and boat owners’ association, has decided to ring the Kochi port with hundreds of boats on January 22.

Livelihood threatened

The agitation is also to force the Government to dump the Meena Kumari committee report on the basis of which the Government was inviting foreign vessels to fish in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The committee said the opening up India’s waters to multinationals in the name of encouraging joint ventures would ruin the livelihoods of lakhs of fishing families on India’s long coastline. It would also deplete the fishing resources of India.

The Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture had last month invited applications from deep-sea fishing vessels (existing as well as those to be acquired soon) for letter of permission for fishing in India’s EEZ. Those joint ventures in which there is 51 per cent Indian equity are also eligible for applying.

Trade unions point out that this was a ploy to allow multinational companies to exploit India’s fishing resources. Multinationals as well as big Indian companies would enter the waters through the backdoor using the joint venture route, they said. The decision was on the basis of the Meena Kumari report which fishing trade unions in India have strongly opposed. The coordination committee said that if the Government went ahead with the decision, it would forever destroy the livelihoods of millions of people, including fishermen, boat workers, fish traders, exporters and those engaged in a host of ancillary trades.

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