The government has established special district-level committees to curb illegal fishing in 15 districts, seven of them along the North-East coast, bringing the defence ministry, the navy, the coast guard and the police into the administration of fisheries in a region where fishermen have long accused the navy of selective enforcement, Tamil Guardian reported.
The committees cover Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Mannar and Ampara, alongside Negombo, Chilaw, Colombo, Puttalam, Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Tangalle. These are the fisheries department’s own districts rather than administrative ones, and several — Negombo, Chilaw and Tangalle among them — are coastal centres that sit inside larger administrative districts.
A progress review on the committees was held at the parliament complex on 25 September, chaired by the fisheries minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar, deputy defence minister Major General Aruna Jayasekara and the deputy fisheries minister Rathna Gamage.
The defence secretary Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha attended, with the commander of the navy, the director general of the coast guard, the deputy inspector general of police for the nautical and tourist division, and senior officials from the fisheries department, the National Aquaculture Development Authority and local government bodies.
The committees are intended as coordination points on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which the government says threatens marine ecosystems, the livelihoods of licensed fishermen and national food security, and on the use of fishing vessels for smuggling and human trafficking. Neither the defence ministry nor the fisheries ministry has set out what powers the committees hold, who chairs them at district level, or whether fishermen’s organisations are represented on them.
The structure follows a high-level meeting in parliament in November last year, co-chaired by minister Chandrasekar, justice minister Harshana Nanayakkara and deputy minister Jayasekara, which addressed poaching by local and foreign vessels, boats disabling their vessel monitoring systems, the use of unauthorised radio frequencies, drug trafficking and smuggling conducted under the guise of fishing, and delays in court cases involving seized vessels.
Fishermen in the North-East have accused the navy of selective enforcement, saying it moves against local Tamil fishermen while Indian bottom trawlers operate in northern waters largely unimpeded.
The navy has meanwhile arrested Tamil fishermen for illegal fishing in the same waters, including 13 detained at Kattaikadu in Jaffna. It has also been accused of covertly surveying fishing lands at Chundikkulam without notice to the owners.
That is alongside the occupation itself. Fishing settlements at Myliddy have been held inside the Valikamam North High Security Zone since 1990, and landowners there have now held weekly protests outside the military commander’s bungalow for 23 consecutive weeks without a government response. In July, Jayasekara told parliament that 1,661 acres inside that zone would be permanently acquired.
Jayasekara is also the minister who told parliament that cultivation inside military camps was solely for the army’s own consumption, a claim contradicted by footage showing military personnel selling vegetables grown on occupied land to a Keells collection centre in Jaffna.
from The Island https://ift.tt/JbxFA7S
