Registration process of mechanised fishing boats

KOCHI: Even five years after initiating a scheme for registration of mechanised fishing boats, the Department of Fisheries is yet to complete the procedure. The authorities say that the exercise could not be completed as they had to extend the deadline many times since the registration procedure started. “A section of boat owners  have been ignoring repeated intimation by us about the physical inspection of their vessels,” Additional Director (AD), Fisheries, K A Saira Banu said.“However, we have so far managed to complete the registration of more than 90 per cent of boats and the total number comes to nearly 3,000. If the boat owners had produced the vessels for physical inspection on time, the task could have been completed much earlier,” she said. Saira Banu said the latest deadline for registering the boats expired on March 31. “Now, the government will take a decision on extending the deadline again. However, no such decision has been taken so far,” she said. The registration of the boats is being done under the Merchant Shipping Act. Earlier, the registration was done under the Kerala Marine Fishing Regulation Act ( KMFRA).The boat owners, meanwhile, said that they could not produce their vessels for physical inspection due to financial constraints. “It is a fact that many boat owners could not produce their vessels for registration. This was due to financial constraints. A boat needs to be in good condition when it is produced for physical inspection. To make a boat sea-worthy as per the guidelines needs a considerable amount of money to be spent on maintenance work. However, due to the poor catch during the past five years, many boat owners have not been able to finish repair work on their boats. This has prevented them from producing the boats for physical inspection,” explained Joseph Xavier Kalappurakkal, general secretary, All-Kerala Boat Operators’ Association. As per the statistics available with the association, the total number of mechanised  boats in the state is 2,762. “Construction of new boats, which was put on hold earlier, has resumed recently. If we get a good catch this season, all the boat owners will be able to produce the vessels for inspection,” he said.