Fishermen affiliated to All Mechanised Boat Fishermen Association staged a protest at Rameswaram in the district, appealing to the Centre to stop Sri Lanka from dropping bus scrap in the Palk Strait that would affect marine ecology and damage Indian fishermen’s boats and nets.
Association president P. Sesuraja said the Sri Lankan government claimed that it was dropping the scrap in its territorial waters. However, the areas were close to where Indian fishermen were traditionally going for fishing.
“The scrap can also be washed into Indian territory by strong currents. The iron scrap can damage costly fishing nets and wooden boats and cause huge a loss to our fishermen,” Mr. Sesuraja said.
He said traditionally only wooden logs or artificial coral reef were dropped in the sea to enable breeding of fishes. However, now iron scrap was being dropped in the sea with a motive to cause loss to Tamil fishermen, he alleged.
Another demand of the fishermen was to provision of subsidy on diesel price.
“The price of diesel in India was the highest in the world. At this cost, the fishermen cannot break even. Every time we venture into the sea, we spend 250 - 600 litres of diesel. The fishermen cannot make up for the increased fuel cost by selling fishes at higher rates,” he said.
The fishermen demanded that the Centre should supply diesel without excise duty and road cess to the fishermen to protect their livelihood.
