On the narrow verandah of the green-painted house at Poonthura sits three plastic cans of water and two steel food containers. “That’s for the trip,” Darwin, a burly fisherman with lips red from betel chewing, explains in Tamil-laced Malayalam. “Since March, we’ve lost many working days on account of the weather warnings,” adds the fisherman.
With coastal erosion wiping out much of the beach at Poonthura, Darwin and his crew must catch an autorickshaw to Vizhinjam, which lies further south, to board their small four-man, outboard engine-rigged boat. That adds to the overall expenses of putting a boat out to sea.
₹500 a day
“The catch is less nowadays. If we get ₹500 each when we get back, I’ll call myself lucky,” says Muthappan, who crews Darwin’s boat.
The fishermen here say they are in dire straits. Many working days have been lost due to the frequent sounding of weather-related warnings. Ever since the Cyclone Ockhi disaster of 2017, these warnings, issued by the IMD and the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), are taken extremely seriously by the community.
Appeal to govt.
The socio-economic impact of these warnings has been such that the National Fishermen Forum (NFF) has now written to the government demanding that they be framed in a more scientific manner.
“If there is a heavy-wind warning, we stay home for two, three days. There is no income then. We don’t get free rations if we stay home. Every fisherman here has five or six people dependants,” said Darwin.
Friends of Marine Life (FML), a Valiyathura-based research organisation, also stresses the need for a more scientific system of issuing weather alerts.
“The fishermen community is perhaps the only one banned from working during inclement weather. But they are not duly compensated. It will also be helpful to them if we can provide them with alerts regarding the actual conditions in outer sea,” said FML convener Robert Panipilla.
