Leaders of Bangladesh Fish Workers’ Alliance (BFWA) on Monday expressed concern as the government has recently given licenses to 25 new fishing trawlers for fishing in deep sea. The resentment was expressed at a press conference organised by five coastal-based NGOs — COAST, CODEC, PASS, SAD-BD and Udayan — at the Jatiya Press Club.
The BFWA leaders said giving new trawler licenses without any survey on the fish resources in the Bay of Bengal is inappropriate, and urged the government to take into account the interest of marginal fishermen while providing new licences.
Sheikh Asad of Udayan from Bagerhat read out a position paper while Sanat Kumar Bhowmik of BFWA, Shawkat Ali Tutul and Mustafa Kamal Akanda of COAST Trust, among others, spoke at the press conference.
Sheikh Asad said the livelihood of around 20 million coastal fishermen in Bangladesh is already at stake due to climate change. “The new fishing trawler licenses will make the situation more complicated as those will fish within 40 meters of deep areas of the Bay,” he said.
In the position paper, Asad said the ruling party Awami League in their previous tenure had declared that they would not give any license to the fishing trawlers without any survey on the fish resources of the Bay.
He said: “The licenses are being issued with the party interest and not based on any scientific analysis. At present, there are 299 trawlers exploiting fish resources in the Bay of Bengal.”
Sanat Kumar Bhowmik of BFWA said there are more than 43,000 mechanised boats now fish within 40 meters of the sea. But, often these fishing areas are trespassed by those trawlers grabbing the earnings of the marginal fishermen. – UNB
