KARACHI, July 18: Two directors representing the Karachi Fisheries Harbour Authority and the Marine Fisheries Department in the 15-member Board of Directors of the Fishermen Cooperatives Society have been removed.
It is for the first time that the government has excluded from its nominations the directors of these two key organisations in the FCS Board which is a policy making organization despite the fact that these organizations play a vital role in implementing the policies of the federal as well as the provincial governments in the Karachi Fish Harbour.
In the past, the heads of these departments have always been nominated as directors in the FCS board by the government, but this time they were ignored.
Among the 15-member FCS board, eight directors are to be nominated by the government and seven are elected by fishermen who are members of the society. Right from 1952, the nominee of the government had been elected chairman and one of the elected directors was elected vice-chairman. But this practice had been shun this time as both the offices have been filled with government nominees.
In a signed statement, elected directors of the Society, including Haji Mohammad Yunis, Usman Lalwani and Habibullah Baloch, have taken serious notice of the removal of the two directors, representing federal as well as provincial governments in the Karachi Fish Harbour. They urged the governor and the chief minister and the cooperatives department to look into the implications of this decision as it would badly affect the working of the harbour.
Adviser Faqir Mohammad Jadam Magrio took over the charge of chairman of the society recently when he was nominated by the government as one of its directors at a special meeting of the board while for the post of vice-chairman one of the nominees is from the coalition partner in the Sindh government.
The affairs of the fish harbour are now being looked after by the two coalition partners of the ruling party in the province as elected directors have been kept away from the scene.
Fisheries sources say a split among the seven-member group of the elected directors has forced the government to nominate its “own men” for this prestigious offices.
