KARACHI, April 20: A large number of fishermen have been rendered jobless by the administration of the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), which barred them from anchoring their boats at a makeshift jetty in Gizri Creek a month ago.

A visit, organised by the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), to their residential area and the makeshift jetty in Gizri showed that in the middle of the upscale locality of Defence, families of these poor fishermen eke out a living.

“Already burdened by the sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities, poor fishermen are left with no choice but to sell foodstuffs while others go to the Sea View to catch small fish from the shore. But, for how long can we survive in this manner?” asks a woman living in a Gizri slum as she prepares food for her children. The locality still awaits water and gas supplies. As a result, these poor people are forced to use firewood to cook food.

Talking to journalists, some fishermen complained not only about the ban imposed by DHA but also about the atrocities allegedly committed by the DHA security staff.

“Six of our boats have so far been damaged and one was burnt some time ago. We have been stopped to anchor our boats at the makeshift jetty or use them for fishing. Not only that, many fishermen were subjected to torture, their bicycles were impounded by the DHA security personnel recently,” said Hussain Dorahi, a representative of the fishing community residing in Gizri.

Mr Dorahi wondered as to how fishermen would carry out their tasks without bringing the boats to the coast. He said that this was the fourth time during the past three decades that the fishermen had been evicted from a jetty by the DHA officials.

About the latest move, he said: “In 2005, the then DHA administer through a written agreement allowed fishermen to carry out their activities from 6am to 6pm. However, the new administrator refused to acknowledge the accord on the grounds that there was no reference of a jetty in the agreement.”

The media coordinator of the PFF, Sami Memon, said that bad luck struck fishermen when DHA was established and thousands of fishermen were expelled from their old jetties and ancestral villages one after another.

However, the DHA Administrator, retired Brigadier Kamran Aziz, denied that the organization had prohibited fishing in Gizri Creek and maintained that “fishermen had been just stopped from bringing their boats to the shore.”

“They can do fishing but they can’t bring their boats near the shore,” he said, adding that all allegations of fishermen regarding damages to their boats were baseless. When asked as to how the fishermen could carry out their activities without bringing their boats to the shore, he said: “I don’t know how they can do that. But we can’t give them the permission.”