No accurate data on migrant fishers

Most work on daily wages, boat owners keep no record

December 17, 2017 08:57 am | Updated 08:58 am IST - Kozhikode:

A group of migrant labourers from Odisha who independently go for fishing from the Beypore harbour.

A group of migrant labourers from Odisha who independently go for fishing from the Beypore harbour.

How many migrant labourers are employed by fishing boats in the district? The Fisheries Department has no clear idea. The result: in times of natural calamities or accidents at sea, there is no way to identify the non-Kerala people.

Officials of the department now heave a sigh of relief only because all the fishing boats that had ventured into sea during Cyclone Ockhi were safely back at the coast. As the flow of migrant workers to the sector is irregular or sometimes short, boat owners are not keen on maintaining a record of their whereabouts and other identity details. Most of the migrants work on daily wages without any insurance or other benefits.

Labour dept effort

Sijesh, a boat owner from Puthiyappa, says a large number of boats in Kozhikode district and other parts of the State are depending on the service of migrants as the labour cost is low and they are interested in taking up the job.

Though there is an instruction from the department to keep a record of the migrant workers, it is hard to maintain as they change the job often and move to other locations, he says.

According to department sources, the preparation of an accurate data on the migrant labour force in the fisheries sector is a challenging task though efforts are under way to make one with the details of domestic fishers. Like in any other sectors, the flow of migrant workers to the fishing sector is also increasing and that the Labour Department is making some new arrangements to maintain the records of such workers, they say.

Leaders of fishermen organisations say that majority of the boat owners are totally clueless about the migrant labourers’ identity. They leave the whole responsibility to the boat drivers who are not bothered about the security aspects of the workers and their whereabouts. There are around 200 boats at Beypore harbour which are being operated by migrant workers, the leaders point out.

“We have raised this issue several times at State-level review meetings of the Fisheries Department, but it is still being overlooked citing technicalities. During the Cyclone Ockhi, we came across even incidents where the boat owners could not give the names of the rescued fishermen from their capsized boats,” says Beypore Harbour Development Committee leader Karichal Preman. He also points out that some of the recent attempts made by the police to track all boats that are operated by unidentified migrant workers have also been a failure.

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