VASCO: The traditional fishermen from the state under the banner of Goenchea Ramponkarancho Ekvott (GRE) on Tuesday slammed Fisheries Minister Vinod Palyekar for his statement that his department is not yet fully equipped to crackdown on fishing ban violators, though efforts are made to crackdown on a few using available resources.
“Saying that the Fisheries Department is ill-equipped and has no enough staff and resources to crack down on illegalities is quite shocking and unacceptable as previous Fisheries Minister Avertano Furtado had purchased new vessel worth Rs over 2 crore. But now even after having the patrolling boat, the department is unable do crackdown on the illegalities and this shows that government is least bothered to tackle the menace,” GRE general secretary Olencio Simoes said.
He said, “Our simple question is that till date the government has spent huge amount on patrolling vessel and its maintenance but how many cases has the government booked till date.” “Also despite written and verbal complaints, the department is not acting. Here it is clear that department has enough resources to crack down on illegality but there is no will to do so only because the staff responsible for patrolling have connived with violators and hence are not interested in taking action. In fact one of the senior officers from Fisheries Department had also raised similar concerns and had asked one of our members to join the team during patrolling. Unfortunately, this suggestion did not work out,” Simoes claimed.
“We had even suggested to the Fisheries Department that we would provide one of our vessels along with crew to crack down on illegalities but even this suggestion was not accepted and now the minister claims that the department is not fully equipped, which is not acceptable to us,” he said.
He said likewise in Maharashtra where Fisheries Department has been using drones to check fishing ban violations, Goa too can procure such drones and other modern gadgets to maintain vigil and act against the violators.
