Seven or eight boats a day are going out from Botgachtola ghat in northern Sandwip, Chattogram, and coming back with hilsa despite the 8-29 October ban to protect mother hilsa, local people allege; similar reports come from Rahmatpur ghat in the middle of the island. Meanwhile, 15 days into the ban, no fisher had received government food aid as of Friday, Prothom Alo reported.
According to the upazila fisheries office, 23 joint drives were carried out at Sandwip's ghats from 8 to 21 October. In 21 of them nobody was caught and no hilsa recovered; two drives seized 305kg of hilsa and 42,000 metres of net, and a mobile court fined two fishers. Field assistant Mahmudun Nabi said officials waited all night at Botgachtola on 14 October and found no one, learning later that the fish had changed hands elsewhere.
Residents say boats return between 10pm and 5am depending on the tide, the fish are sold at a different spot each day, and prices are lower than usual. A fisher who asked not to be named said fine-mesh current nets are catching small hilsa and even jatka of six to eight inches. In normal times hilsa is sold at an open auction to the highest bidder; during the ban a few traders are buying in secret.
Southern Sandwip is the opposite picture. No boats are leaving Banglabazar and Gachtoli ghats in Sarikait union, and fishers sit on the embankment mending nets. Abul Bashar, 45, said the boatmen and crews are away and will return on 29 October to go back to sea on the 30th. At Sadarhat, boat owner Durlav Jaldas, 35, was weaving a heavy new net for large sea fish.
Fishers who lose their income during the ban are supposed to receive 25kg of rice each. The fisheries office counts 8,332 card-holding fishers in the upazila, of whom 4,000 will get rice this year. Fishers say more than half have not even received a card yet; Arjun Jaldas of Santoshpur is one of them. 'Twenty-five kilos is not much, but it would help in these hard days,' said Md Yunus, a fisher in Sarikait.
Md Motasim Billah, the acting upazila fisheries officer, said instructions have come to update the card list and he would arrange cards for anyone left out; to make drives work, officials plan to go to sea with the Coast Guard or raid several spots at once with more staff. Upazila Nirbahi Officer Amjad Hossain said the rice has reached every area but could not be handed out because of the Durga Puja holidays, and distribution will begin on Sunday.
The report is by Nurul Anwar, Prothom Alo's Sandwip correspondent.
Photo: Prabirghose / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Prothom Alo
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