DIANA FERNANDES
PANJIM: Even as this government prides itself on its governance, employees hired by the Fisheries Department and the Brackish Water Development Agency (BWDA) at Benaulim continue to be idle and get paid for it even after work at the prawn hatchery was halted in 2006.
The hatchery is also home to the BWDA and majority of the 29 odd staff at the hatchery have had no work and are allotted work only prior or during elections at the mamlatdar’s office.
Promises were made by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, Fisheries Minister Avertano Furtado and local MLA Caitu D’Silva but none have been fulfilled till date with Furtado promising that they will be accommodated in the Science and Technology department.
Dr Sharmila Monteiro, Director of Fisheries, when questioned insisted that all employees were shifted to other departments at the South Goa Collectorate.
But when Herald visited the place more than eight people were seen at the office.
“There is no one at the hatchery. Those people you saw may have gone to collect their salaries,” said Monteiro.
The ground reality however is quite different. The general atmosphere at the hatchery is one of boredom and of having nothing to do.
“We are fed up with the fact that we have no work to do. But we are hoping that the government will accommodate us somewhere soon,” said one jaded employee.
The CEO of BWDA Cedric Gomes who was not present at the hatchery office and rarely shows up, said the fisheries department was now in charge of the hatchery.
“The hatchery is being handled by the fisheries department now. I am holding dual charge ~ one pertaining to development of aqua culture and the second is to manage the shrimp hatchery, but that has not been functioning for many years now,” said Gomes.
He disclosed plans of constructing a marine park with private backing in the 45,000 square meters plot of government land that overlooks the Benaulim beach. “It lies entirely with the government. A final decision however has not been taken.”
Monteiro however insisted that nothing has been finalised yet. “Right now we can’t say anything about what may come up there, but there is something in the pipeline,” she said.
Back in 1991 a year before the hatchery project was launched, most of the employees responded to a government advertisement. After the usual procedure of interviews, many were recruited through the employment exchange. Years later, when the BWDA was set up a couple more
were added to their ranks which swelled to 29.
Set up in 1992 as a pilot project under the United Nations Development Programme, the hatchery at the time showed vast potential to meet the demand of shrimp seeds along the west coast. After being besieged with problems and half-hearted attempts, all efforts failed to keep the project running with the funding from the UNDP also ceasing.
The hatchery that was built to manage a 25 million tonne produce of live shrimps never reached its capacity and only managed a maximum of 10 million at one time, say sources from the office.
This decline in the production is the main reason for its downfall. In 2006, the Union Agriculture Ministry strongly endorsed fresh water farming predicting Goa would lead the country in the development of both brackish and fresh water prawn farming.
They had said that it would provide 75 per cent of the funds for any aquaculture project under the condition that the state government contributed the balance of 25 per cent. None of this happened.
Earlier in June this year the hatchery ponds were the scene for the Sao Joao party where Furtado, Caitu as well as Parrikar were in attendance. It was here that the staff raised the issue over the fact that the 6th pay commission benefits were rolled back and recoveries were made from their salaries. Some received salaries as low as Rs 3,500. At this time Furtado had said that they would be accommodated at the Fisheries department itself.
Despite all the promises, the majority still await their transfers and hope that the process doesn’t take another couple of years.
