Residents of Nambiyar Nagar, mostly women, conducted a sit-in protest from Saturday night to convey their anger over the delay in finding 11 fishermen belonging to their locality who had gone missing in mid-sea a week back due to Ochki cyclone.
They threatened to go in a procession on Sunday for conducting a protest at the Collectorate, but relented after officials convinced them about the steps being taken by the administration to locate the missing fishermen. Later in the day, Textiles Minister O.S. Manian called on the residents to reassure them about the steps being taken by the administration.
According to a senior official of Fisheries Department, of the 357 fishermen who were reported missing based on the inputs provided by panchayats covering fishing hamlets, 25 among them were yet to be located.
The Fisheries Department had officials stationed at Kanyakumari, Cochin, Goa and other coastal towns for updating information on the missing fishermen.
The main anxiety of the residents of Nambiyar Nagar is to determine if the eleven fishermen were alive or not, president of Nambiyar Nagar Fishermen Welfare Society Kandasamy said.
The apprehension among the residents was that the searches by the Indian Navy had been extended beyond 70 nautical miles.
