National Consultation on ‘The Marine Fisheries' (Regulation and Management) Act, 2009

NEW DELHI, Mar. 02, 2010, 12.00 Hrs (CBCI News):

“The Marine Fisheries" (Regulation and Management) Act, 2009 proposed to be passed in the next session of the parliament has serious repercussion in the lives and livelihood of 24.5 lakhs of fishermen directly and many others indirectly in India.

The proposed bill is a drastic encroachment on the right of the fishermen to have free ingress in the sea for fishing and the proposed limit of 22 kms in the sea is very little for fishing and the violation amounts to serious punishments of three years of imprisonment and fine up to Rupees 9 lakhs.

In order to propose our serious objection in this regard under CBCI and chalk out further strategies to counter this bill in the present form, a national level consultation of the different stakeholders working under the coastal dioceses of India has been convened on March 3, 2010 at Ashirbhavan, Ernakulam, Kerala. The expected participants would be the labour commission / movement directors of the dioceses, social work department directors and many other stakeholders working with fishermen. The local organisers of the event would be the Kerala Labour Movement (KLM), the official organ of Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference for Labour Development.