Animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh addresses the Special Fishermen’s Day function in Patna on Sunday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, July 10: At a time when new schemes are beingintroduced for fishermen to give fish farming a much-needed boost, the central welfare schemes for their betterment are yet to take wings.

On the occasion of Special Fishermen’s Day, animal and fish resources department organised an event today and announced a number of welfare schemes for the fishermen.

In 1957, an Indian scientist Dr Hiralal Chaudhuri introduced “induced breeding” for majorcarp (comprise at least six breeds of fish) for the first time in the country. This helped a lot in fish breeding and pure majorcarp could be achieved. In 1972, the Indian government announced this day as Special Fishermen’s Day. The state government in 2007 started celebrating the day as an official ceremony.

The animal and fish resources minister, Giriraj Singh, inaugurated the event at Bihar Veterinary College today.

On the occasion, Singh said: “The state government is keen on fish production and welfare of fishermen. It is laying emphasis on the training aspect of the fishermen so that fish farming can be done in the best possible manner to increase production. We will send 1,500 fishermen outside Bihar for training.”

Singh added: “Those who are into fish farming would get a subsidy of 40 per cent on whatever is spent on pond digging. Earlier, this amount was fixed at 20 per cent. No fish farmer’s family should be left uninsured too.” However, when at one hand the government was assuring fishermen all help, on the other, there are central welfare schemes meant for fish farmers that are yet to see the light of the day.

The central fishermen welfare project, under which fishermen had to be provided a house each and a community hall, has run into rough weather.

Under the project, no fisherman has been given a house yet, hinting at a possible scam into the scheme.

Four officials of the fisheries department have been found guilty in an enquiry carried out by the joint director of the department, Yogendra Kumar Madhup, in June last year.

Even Giriraj Singh’s order to lodge an FIR against the four guilty in December last year, seems to have fallen on deaf ears. In 1994, under the central fishermen welfare project, Rs 35 lakh was sanctioned for the construction of houses for 100 fishermen and Rs 1.75 lakh for community hall whereas Rs 4 lakh for installation of handpumps. This had to be done in the Gogri and Parbatta circles in Khagaria district in 1995-96 but in vain. The central and state governments were supposed to pay half the amount each under the project.

Singh said: “A file on the issue has been sent to the advocate-general for his consideration. The advocate-general will take the decision. The state government would take action after that.”

Rishikesh Kashyap, the chairman of Co-operative Fisheries Federation Limited (Coffed), said: “The state government failed to provide houses to the poorest fishermen. Not only this, the mud houses of the fishermen were abolished promising they would be provided new and concrete houses.”Sources said among the four persons, who have been found guilty in the case are former fisheries director R.N. Choudhary, former engineers Rajeshwar Singh and Ramashankar Upadhyay and former chief engineer Siyalal Sahu.