The administration is carrying out regular drives, jailing and fining hilsa poachers and dismantling temporary markets. Yet the poachers are not stopping. As soon as officials leave, tents go up, markets are set up and hilsa is sold. Often buyers and sellers fix the deal and the price by mobile phone, and buyers find various ways to reach these remote markets.

From the start of the drive to enforce the government's ban on catching hilsa, the administration has run extensive operations on the Padma river and adjoining chars in Shibchar of Madaripur district. It has dismantled more than a hundred temporary structures at several markets. During the current drive, mobile courts have jailed nearly 200 fishermen in Shibchar alone, each for a year. But with no permanent law-enforcement or administrative presence on the river and chars, fishermen go back to the river whenever they get the chance.

A visit to the area found that the hilsa markets are set up again as soon as the officials leave. Fishermen, buyers and sellers have chosen chars with no roads. With no permanent law-enforcement presence or camp on the river and chars, mother hilsa and other hilsa of all sizes are being sold openly on the Padma and its chars in Shibchar of Madaripur, Zajira of Shariatpur, Louhajang of Munshiganj, Dohar of Dhaka and Sadarpur of Faridpur.

Fisherman Almas Hossain said: "Because of the ban, more fish are found in the Padma at this time. So we fish, and sell the catch on different chars of the Padma."

Another fisherman, Saiful Islam, said: "During the ban the administration is very strict in our Shibchar, but not so strict in Munshiganj, Zajira and other areas. So we go to those areas to fish and sell on the chars."

A buyer who did not want to be named said he had heard hilsa could be bought cheaply in the Kharakandi area of Madbarer Char on the Padma, so he came by trawler, hopping from char to char, and bought some fish. The price, however, seemed high to him.

Some college students who had come from Faridpur for a picnic said they had learned that hilsa could be bought on this char, so they came with friends, bought fresh hilsa and were now cooking khichuri. Each of them would eat one hilsa, they said, but because of the prices they had bought small fish.

Shibchar upazila nirbahi officer Md Asaduzzaman said: "We are carrying out repeated drives on the Padma, and fishermen are being jailed and fined. More than a hundred hilsa-selling structures have been removed from the chars. But to protect mother hilsa, law enforcers need to be deployed permanently on the river and the chars."

Source: Kaler Kantho. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.