HYDERABAD, July 23: The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum has demanded that the Sindh government should abolish the contract system for catching fish in sweet water lakes of the province and replace it with the licence system.

Mustafa Meerani, the forum’s vice-president, and office-bearers Mohammad Mallah and Ramzan Mallah told a news conference at the Hyderabad press club that contracts for fishing in sweet water lakes and ponds of the province had been given to influential men at the expense of millions of fishermen who solely depended on fishing for their livelihood.

‘The contractors purchase fish from the fishermen at very cheap rates and treat them like slaves. If anyone resists their highhandedness they implicate him in false cases,’ they said adding that ‘they do not allow them to take even a single fish for their own families’.

The forum’s office-bearers said that in 1977, the Sindh Assembly had introduced the licence system. Under the system the fishermen got licenses to catch fish from Manchhar, Keenjhar, Bakaar, Sindh Dhoro and downstream Kotri barrage, they said.

Even the entire schedule of the licence system for catching fish from the five big water resources was made part of the Fisheries Ordinance 1980 and the rules framed there under in 1983, they said.

The Sindh government abolished the licence system and replaced it with the contract system without any prior notice, they complained.

The forum’s struggle had, however, discouraged so far the fisheries department’s auctioning the sweet water resources though the department had kept announcing auction schedule, they said.

They said that the forum, protesting against the contract system for last two years, had now decided to organize a series of protest demonstrations from July to September 2006 all over the province. Protest weeks would also be observed in all the districts starting from Hyderabad from Saturday, they added.

In the second phase, the forum would organise a protest caravan which would start its march from Karachi on September 8. The caravan after making stops at Thatta, Badin, Sanghar, Sakrand, Dadu, Larkana, Jacobabad, Shikarpur, Sukkur and Khairpur, would reach Hyderabad on September 17, they said.

The forum then would organise a long march from Hyderabad on September 25 which would reach Karachi on October 1 where the marchers would stage a sit-in outside the Sindh Chief Minister’s House the same day.

They reiterated their demand for the abolition of contract system for the protection of natural rights of millions of “Mohanas” (fishermen).

Meanwhile, a large number of fishermen observed hunger strike outside the press club against the contract system.