The vice-chairperson of National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) and General Secretary of Goenchea Ramponkarancho Ekvott (GRE), Olencio Simoes, said the fishermen community across Goa are opposed to the government plan to develop the inland waterways of about 101 rivers across the country and plans to dredge around 14,500 km of rivers and canals across India including five rivers and one canal in Goa, i.e Mandovi, Zuari, Chapora, Mapusa and Sal river and Cumbharjua canal in the state of Goa and their plans to develop 1100 islands of India for tourism activities.
He said the Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Nitin Gadkari cheated the fishermen of India by making tall promises by presenting its “draft National Policy on fishing and fisherpersons” in which it objectives was to improve the standard of living of fishing community in a sustainable and equitable manner, to conserve and manage fisheries resources and marine biodiversity for sustainable utilization and to preserve, protect, renovate and repair the existing water bodies and create new ones as community assets in order to encourage inland fishing but today this same government is undoing it and displacing fishermen community completely.
“large scale capital dredging of almost 410 km of Goa’s rivers will completely destroy the ecology of the river as several million lakhs cubic metres of silt will be dredged annually to maintain the draft in the navigational channel across 410 km rivers of Goa. Further the width of most rivers are hardly 400 to 600 metres in which at least 280metres will be occupied by the navigational channel and the fishermen all along the 410km of river will be completely debarred even to fish like how they have done at MPT Vasco” Simoes said.
He added that “These 80,000 fishermen will be the biggest losers as their habitat and traditional fishing activities will be disrupted due to hundreds of proposed ports, harbor, terminals, waterports, seaports ,heavy movement of Cargo etc. India has about 14,500 km of navigable and potentially navigable waterways of which around 55% is used regularly and about 44 million tonnes of cargo is moved annually through these waterways using mechanized vessels and country boats. These activities have already been displacing the traditional fisher persons and damaging marine ecology as this mechanized vessels discharge sewerage and oil. Often these oil spillage get flushed out during monsoon which in turn destroys the insulating ability of fur-bearing mammals, such as sea otters, and the water repellency of a bird’s feathers, thus exposing these creatures to the harsh elements. Without the ability to repel water and insulate from the cold water, birds and mammals eventually die from hypothermia” added Simoes.
As per Simoes, dredging of inland rivers will finish the ecology of Goa. Dredging the river will not solve the raising concerns of possible water-logging especially in low-lying areas but will only aggravate water logging. In Goa, we have 47 fishing villages in Goa which are in inland fishing thus development of 5 rivers and one canal for the water transportation is not practical as several thousand fishermen and their families are dependent on river for their livelihood.
“Dredging will create disturbance to aquatic ecosystems ,The soil deposits in any water-body have a certain pre-disposed composition. Through dredging this composition will be altered thus because of the said alteration, the existing habitat of creatures and organisms that depends on the original composition of the soil will die out due to the unfavourableness of the changes caused. The turbidness of the soil under the water also changes because of this alteration in the underwater soil composition.”
