Fishers of 12 hamlets in Karaikal district, protesting for the last 10 days assailing “inaction” by the Puducherry government in removing accumulated silt in the Arasalar river estuary, have decided to resume fishing from Wednesday after an assurance of budgetary allocation.
“We have been pushed into a predicament of waiting for the tides to move our boats to the sea and back, in the absence of regular water flow in the estuary. The demand for dredging the estuary has not been addressed for long,” a fisherman of Kilinjalmedu hamlet said.
The representatives of Kilinjalmedu and Karaikalmedu, the two largest hamlets, who took up the issue with Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy, were reportedly given an assurance that an allocation of ₹2.5 crore had been made in the budget for carrying out dredging.
The district administration, on its part, also told the fishermen that a tender would be issued for the project within 10 days.
The fishermen told the Chief Minister that they would stop their operations if the project was not carried out in time as promised.
“Quite often, the boats hit the rocks in the shallow water even at the time of tides and get damaged. We have waited enough. The Puducherry government needs to realise that disruption of fishing has caused a debilitating effect on the local economy,” said a representative of one of the hamlets.