Fisheries Bill before House panel

After a two-hour discussion, the Assembly on Wednesday referred a Bill to invigorate inland fisheries to its Subject Committee.

The Kerala Fish Seed Bill, 2014, which went to the panel for honing, seeks to bring in “an integrated planning, monitoring and management mechanism” for ensuring supply of quality fish seed to inland fish farmers — the supply spurring growth in demand, spread of inland fish farming to more areas in the State, and thus growth in production, Fisheries Minister K. Babu said, piloting the Bill.

He said the State had nearly four lakh hectares of inland water-spread consisting rivers, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and ponds.

Hardly 25 per cent of this supported fisheries activities now and one constraint was the difficulty in accessing fish seed for cultivation.

Some quantity came from other States, but there was no system here to ensure that the hatcheries in the State and those located outside the State supplying fish seed to the farmers here were supplying seeds of good and safe quality.

The Bill envisages the setting up of a State Fish Seed Centre and Regional Fish Seed Centres and laboratories, appointment of fish seed inspectors and analysts, a registration and licence system for hatcheries, penal provisions for flouting provisions governing quality of seeds, several adjudicators and an appeal system.

The powers of the adjudicators are vested with officers of deputy director’s rank in the Fisheries Department, and those of the appeal system, with joint director’s rank or above.

K.K. Lathika, G.S. Jayalal and A. Pradeep Kumar from the Opposition side spoke of how the “Bill does not address the real impediments before the development of inland fisheries in the State” — pollution of waterbodies, reclamation of lakes, the use of destructive fishing methods and so on.

Dominique Presentation of the Congress too spoke of the diverse issues hampering inland fisheries and said this fisheries Bill would help promote fisheries production in the State.