OTHER DEPARTMENTS

FISHERIES DEPARTMENT

Departmental Set-up.— Before 1956, fisheries activities in the eight districts of the Vidarbha region and the three districts viz.. Chhindwara. Seoni and Betul, now under Madhya Pradesh, were looked after by an Assistant Fisheries Development Officer posted at Nagpur while the Assistant Fisheries Development Officer with headquarters at Bhandara was in-charge of fish seed collection scheme with statewide jurisdiction. The post of Assistant Fisheries Development Officer was redesignated as the Superintendent of Fisheries, with the Reorganisation of States in 1956. Subsequently, the Superintendent of Fisheries, Bhandara, was placed in-charge of the fisheries activities in Bhandara district while the Superintendent of Fisheries, Nagpur, supervised the work in the remaining seven districts of the Vidarbha region. Both the Superintendents were responsible directly to the Director of Fisheries, Bombay.

With the addition of one more post of Superintendent under the Second Five-Year Plan in 1958 with headquarters at Chandrapur, the work in Chandrapur and Yeotmal districts was transferred to him. The post of an Assistant Director of Fisheries was created with headquarters at Nagpur as a regional head for the Vidarbha region.

The Assistant Director of Fisheries is the planning, supervising and coordinating officer for all the activities of the department in the three fisheries divisions in the Vidarbha region.

Duties.— The duties of the Superintendent of Fisheries are as follows:—

(i) to carry out survey of new sheets of water to assess their suitability for pisciculture;

(ii) to stock tanks and ponds with suitable varieties of fish every year;

(iii) to construct nurseries and to nurture fry in them;

(iv) to form and supervise all the fisheries co-operative societies and to devise ways and means to improve the socio-economic conditions of fishermen;

(v) to investigate applications from fishermen for loan and subsidy from Government;

(vi) to effect loan recoveries and credit the money into the treasury;

(vii) to associate and encourage fishermen to take advantage of different schemes of the department;

(viii) to collect statistics of fish and other data pertaining to fisheries and fishermen of the district;

(ix) to give technical guidance to the deep tank fishing operations conducted by the societies;

(x) to supervise the working of ice and cold storage plant; and

(xi) to supervise in general the work of development of fisheries in areas under his jurisdiction.

Fisheries Co-operatives.— Improvement of socio-economic condition of fishermen has been one of the main objectives of the Fisheries Department. Attention is focused on the formation of fisheries co-operatives. There were 46 fisheries co-operative societies functioning in the district in 1968, with a total membership of 2,500 fishermen. The total share capital of these societies as on 30-6-1968 was Rs. 41,852 and Government share capital contribution, Rs. 43,500. Apart from the activities undertaken by these societies, fishing permits to net out fish from the departmental tanks are also given to the societies. During departmental works, such as transplantation of fingerlings, induced breeding experiments, etc., members of these societies are employed on daily wages.

There were about 15,000 fishermen in the district, out of whom 10,000 were full-time fishermen and rest were part-time workers.

Developmental Activities.—Water resources available for the fish culture in the district are vested in different authorities, i.e., Fisheries Department, Irrigation and Power Department, Zilla Parishad and individual fishermen. To undertake development of fisheries, most of the water resources are leased out, preferably to the fisheries co-operative societies for a period of 5 years on reasonable lease amounts. This has also helped in bringing the scattered fisherman population under co-operative fold.

The tanks under fish culture in the district are stocked with quick growing varieties of fishes i.e., Rohu, Catla, etc. To increase the fish production, fisheries co-operative societies, local bodies and individual pisciculturists are helped by supplying quality fish seed at subsidised rates. The Department also extends loan-cum-subsidy facilities to the fisheries co-operative societies and individuals for desalting the tanks in order to make these tanks more productive.

Taking into consideration the increasing demand of fish seed of cultivable fishes in the district, a well equipped fish seed farm was established at Seonibandh in 1963-64. The total area of the farm is 4.27 hectares. The farm consists of 6 nurseries, 2 rearing ponds and 6 brood fish ponds. Water supply to the farm is from the Seonibandh reservoir throughout the year.

In addition to this, there are about 15,300 fishing nursery tanks which are looked after by the Department.

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