Threatening to approach the judiciary for its intervention, the AITUC-affiliated All India Fish Workers’ Federation sees a big conspiracy on the part of the NDA government to render fishermen jobless and drive them out of their hamlets by pursuing with the development of a shipping corridor from Kutch in Gujarat to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.
Federation national general secretary P. Raju, who was here to participate in a rally of fishermen to press for their demands, told The Hindu that the shipping channel would only benefit the shipping companies. It was being proposed in blatant violation of Coastal Regulation Zone rules framed in 1991 and the subsequent changes incorporated in 2011.
Mr. Raju said this was the first shipping corridor being proposed to be implemented and in future once it was completed more would be replicated in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. “As the policy will hit the livelihood of thousands of traditional fishermen, we want to seek judicial intervention if the government failed to withdraw the proposal,” he stated. The proposal is to develop a corridor to allow movement of ships by designating 15 nautical miles from the coastline with a width of 20 nautical miles from Kutch to Kanyakumari.
