SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Gov­ern­ment wants to boost lo­cal fresh­wa­ter fish pro­duc­tion.In­cen­tives for the sec­tor were re­cent­ly an­nounced by Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj when he vis­it­ed the Seafood In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (SIDC).Ma­haraj said 135 tonnes of tilapia is con­sumed in this coun­try an­nu­al­ly but on­ly about 22 tonnes are pro­duced in the same pe­ri­od.

To boost pro­duc­tion the min­istry is of­fer­ing tilapia feed at cost price to pro­duc­ers, the min­is­ter said.He added that the pro­gramme, which start­ed last month, has al­ready proved suc­cess­ful.Ma­haraj said T&T im­ports most of its tilapia fil­lets from Chi­na and to com­pete with that mar­ket, a fish pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty is planned for the Carlsen Field area.

In a bid to boost pub­lic aware­ness abut the fish Ma­haraj said he spoke with of­fi­cials of the Sug­ar Cane Feeds Cen­tre at Long­denville to open its doors one week per month to sell tilapia to the pub­lic. Ma­haraj said 3000 cas­cadu­ra fin­ger­lings have been im­port­ed for in­te­gra­tion in­to lo­cal stocks and fish­ing ponds at Bam­boo Set­tle­ment in the Grand Baz­zar area will be up­grad­ed to serve as a fish hatch­eries unit.

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing a re­view the fish­eries bill which is closed to 100 years old and con­tains ar­cha­ic claus­es.On the is­sue of trawl­ing, Ma­haraj said if it was up to him no in­dus­tri­al or se­mi-in­dus­tri­al trawl­ing would be al­lowed since those ac­tiv­i­ties de­stroy fish stock and have a neg­a­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.Ma­haraj said el­e­ments with­in the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) were us­ing the is­sue of the ju­di­cial com­plex at Carlsen Field to claim that farm­ers are be­ing dis­placed.

He said sev­en farm­ers were af­fect­ed and four of them have al­ready ac­cept­ed com­pen­sa­tion and cashed their cheques, while the rest are in ne­go­ti­a­tions. Ma­haraj said the role of SIDC is not to print cook­books, or of­fer san­i­ta­tion ad­vice.He said the agency must ac­tive­ly en­gage and de­vel­op the fish­eries sec­tor.