The Plight of Fishing workers of AP
Migrated to Gujarat
With the incident of 21 Fisher-
men held by Pakistan Coast guard
when their boats strayed in to
Arabian Sea controlled by Pakistan,
the plight of fishermen workers
migrated from A.P. to Gujarat to eke
out a living came in to the light. S
Gujarat is supposed to be an
economically developed affluent
state in the rule of B.J.P for a long
time. But it is apparent that the
affluence of the state was based on
the ruthless exploitation of the
labour power of workers particularly
the workers migrated in to from
other states.
While the official A.P. adminis-
tration estimates that there are
around 12,000 fishing workers
migrated from A.P. to Gujarat,
according to the fishermen working
in Gujarat there are around 30,000
Telugu fishermen working there.
Besides them many fishermen
from Tamil Nadu and South-eastern
states toil there. They work for the
owners of mechanised fishing boats
in the job a catching fish from the
Arabian Sea.
Most of the Telugu fishermen
are from Srikakulam, Vijayanagaram
contd from page 17
following in many a weakness in
taking up the real issues of workers
and their interests in aiding the
ruthless mine owners to exploit and
kill workers in their pursuit of
earning super-profits, without any
compunction.
Unless and otherwise the
workers unitedly and constantly
fight with working-class conscious-
ness against the capitalist-classes
and their system, these ‘mine
accident’ killings continue unchecked
taking away the precious lives of
workers!
January - 2019
and Visakhapatnam districts of
Andhra Pradesh. Extreme poverty
and non-availability of fish catch in
the sea-coast of Bay Bengal forced
the fishermen from these areas to
migrate to Arabian Sea shore of
Gujarat, centred at Varaval. Since
the sea of East Coast of Bay of
Bengal is dumped with industrial
chemicals, poisonous industrial
waste, and effluents continuously
it became a peril to the existence
of fish and aquatic life, the fish is
extinct. With this due to lack of
alternative lively-hood or employ-
ment, the fishermen families are
forced to migrate to Gujarat as
contract labour on mechanical
fishing boats.
Though these migrated
fishermen are paid from Rs 12,000
to 14,000, and for minors with Rs
8,000 per month, these highly
skilled fishermen are forced to work
in dismal working and living
conditions as bonded labourers.
There are around 8,000 fishing
boats in Gujarat and around 100
fish processing units depending on
these mechanised fishing boats.
The mechanised boats are run by
owners of the boats, each owner
owning from 10 to 15 mechanised
boats. Most of the fish caught in
these mechanised boats is exported
to the other countries earning
around Rs 3000 crores of foreign
exchange besides with an income
of Rs 15,000 crores from the Indian
markets annually.
On each trip of fish catch, the
owner earns an income from Rs 25-
30 lakhs and sometimes even up
to Rs 50 lakhs on each mechanised
boat. But he merely spends from
Rs 4 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs on each
trip including the cost of diesel oil,
ice, ration to fishermen while on
duty etc besides wages amounting
to Rs 1 lakh per month for 8 fisher-
men workers that work on the boat.
On average on each boat, on each
trip the owner makes a gross
average profit of Rs 25 lakhs.
The fishermen workers have
to live on the boat in the sea from
20-25 days every month. They are
not
provided
with
any
arrangements for proper rest or any
arrangements for their safety. They
have to sleep in petty bunks,
crowded in to small space. They
have no chance or opportunity to
bathe since there is no availability
of fresh water on the boat. So these
workers are forced to live without
taking baths for almost 28 days and
are thus forced to suffer with chronic
skin diseases and other diseases.
They do not have any toilet facilities
and they have to defecate and
urinate directly in to the sea by
hanging on ropes at the side of the
boats in dangerous conditions.
Even when they reach to land after
the fish catching trip, the owners do
not allow them to take rest or enjoy
holidays. On the shore they have
to attend to the works of minor boat
repairs, filling up the boat with ice
for the next trip, procuring required
rations and keeping them in to the
boat, filling the boat with diesel oil
etc. Even these works are not given
time to speak with their other
villages while on shore and they
can only communicate with the
people of their villages if at all their
boats meet with the others on sea.
In a period of 8 months, a worker
can take bath only from 8 to 10 times
while landing on shore, that too by
making his own arrangements for
fresh water to bathe. Many fish
workers fell in to sea accidentally
and died while venturing in to the
sea for fishing. No compensation is
paid for the workers killed on duty.
contd. on page 4
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