The National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) has made it easy for beneficiaries to access assistance by simplifying procedures. Hitherto, they had to fill up 42 forms to avail subsidies, but now a single, user-friendly form is all one needs to fill up and hand over to the district authority, who is either an Assistant or Deputy Director.
The form is then forwarded to the Commissioner-Fisheries at the State-level and the NFDB so that it is processed simultaneously. “Earlier, the process would take up to six to months and even a year, what with at least seven stages from the district to the Board-level. Now we have removed the intermediary stages and expect to clear proposals within two weeks,” said NFDB Chief Executive M.V. Rao.
At a press conference here on Friday, he explained that they had taken several more initiatives in an effort to reach out to stakeholders by involving aquaculture farmers, seed and feed processing entrepreneurs and women’s groups engaged in marketing endeavours across India and make service delivery hassle-free. With an 8,000 km-long coastline, India exported 9.83 lakh tones of fish every year, he said.
Under its most popular scheme, 1,150 vehicles were given to fishermen and cooperative societies at an investment of Rs. 11 crore, apart from spending Rs.39 crore in Telangana and Rs.24 crore in Andhra Pradesh under various schemes for the welfare of fishermen.
The Board, he said, had spent Rs.250 crore on modernising 135 fish markets, 117 retail fish markets and on mobile markets in Andhra Pradesh, Chennai and Mumbai. Funds were sanctioned for modern markets in Hyderabad and Nellore.
Detailing the developmental programmes, Dr. Rao said Rs.109 crore were spent to build 32 Fish Landing Centres and develop 21 Fishing Harbours in eight States, including Andhra Pradesh.
