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ICAR-CIFRI conducted Workshop on Livelihood development of wetland fishers addressing SDGs

Barrackpore 15^th August, 2023
ICAR-CIFRI successfully conducted an interactive one-day workshop entitled “Livelihood development addressing SDG through inland open water fisheries” under SCSP and NICRA on 18 August 2023 with the objective to discuss the way forward of the activities related to inland open water fisheries undertaken by the institute in the adopted wetlands. The workshop was participated by scientists, technical staff, research scholars, and 32 fisherman representatives from 16 wetlands fishery cooperative societies of Murshidabad, Nadia, and North-24 Parganas districts in West Bengal adopted under SCSP programme and NICRA project. Since 2019, ICAR-CIFRI extended its support to the livelihood improvement of Scheduled Caste communities across the country under the Government of India SCSP plan through inland fisheries activities like culture-based fisheries, stock enhancement, pen culture, etc. the institute has successfully demonstrated in situ raising of fish fingerling in pen culture technology in these wetlands since its adoption. The institute has also provided FRP boats and coracles to all the societies of the adopted wetlands.

Around 6000 fishermen beneficiaries got benefitted through these programmes. The workshop was inaugurated with a welcome address by Dr. Aparna Roy, Senior Scientist, and In-charge E & T Cell, followed by the introduction of participants. During the panel discussion, Dr. B. K. Das, Director, ICAR-CIFRI urged the fisherman representatives to state their genuine issues related to the management of their wetland fisheries, asked their opinion on adopting the CIFRI HDPE pen technology in the near future, their expectations from CIFRI related to fisherman’s livelihood development. Dr. Das also stated that CIFRI will assess the efficiency of the cooperative societies in the rejuvenation and promotion of pen culture technology in a participatory mode, CIFRI will only consider those societies which are found efficient for further support and assistance as CIFRI has provided inputs for this technology including FRP boats and coracles for the last three consecutive years to most of the wetland cooperatives. In the feedback and interactive session, all the fisherman participants from each wetland had given their opinion and expressed their gratitude to the institute as they got highly benefited from the support given by CIFRI over the last three years; the common issues raised by the fisherman are macrophyte infestation, water quality deterioration due to jute retting, poaching, siltation, ownership conflicts, issues in issuance of fisherman identity cards, water scarcity due to irregular rainfall, etc.

The panel discussion led by the head of divisions, Dr. M. A. Hassan, Dr. S. K. Manna, Dr. A. K. Bera, and Dr. Aparna Roy, Senior Scientist, and In-charge E & T Cell suggested that co-management of the wetlands (like aquatic weed cleaning by the wetland users) among the stakeholders of the wetland may be the best option to address most of the common issues faced by the fisherman. The Director stated that the managerial problems faced by cooperative societies in the administrative sphere, as stated by the fishers, will be communicated to the Department of Fisheries, Govt. of West Bengal. The workshop was concluded with a formal vote of thanks proposed by Dr. P. Debroy. This workshop was successfully coordinated by Dr. Lianthuamluaia, Scientist and Ms. T. N. Chanu, Scientist, under the supervision of Dr. B. K. Das, Director, ICAR-CIFRI, Barrackpore.