KARACHI, Sept 6: The provincial government has yet to decide about the future leadership of the Fishermen Co-operative Society, a key organization for managing seafood business in Karachi Fish Harbour.
Inquiries from official as well as unofficial sources indicated that there were serious differences among higher provincial authorities on the nomination of the next chairmanship of the Society.
It is reliably learnt that the adviser to chief minister who is also holding the charge of chairmanship of the Karachi Fisheries Harbour Authority (KFHA) is interested in the FCS pivotal office.
However, some government directors had openly shown their displeasure over his nomination and started lobbying against him. The seven elected directors representing fishermen had also opposed his nomination. In the backdrop of this situation, the March 10th meeting for electing a new chairman of the FCS had been postponed.
The FCS is manned by a 15-member Board of Directors. Seven of them are elected by the fishermen community while eight are nominated by the government. As was practised in the past, because of its majority position, the FCS chairman had always been elected from the government side and vice-chairman was chosen from fishermen side.
The process of election was over on March 4 when the seven directors were elected and prior to that the government had announced the nominations of eight directors. A meeting of the board had been scheduled for March 10 to elect a new chairman and vice-chairman, according to the FCS by-laws.
According to reliable sources, the board's meeting was postponed by a provincial minister when the government announced an amended list of government directors superseding two directors. Surprisingly, the new list added the name of adviser to the chief minister as one of the eight directors.
The development raised many eye-brows among the government and elected directors. Sources said that the government can solve the leadership crisis by holding the board's meeting.
They said that the lingering problem had badly affected the fishing business, depriving the FCS and the government from their due shares, as there was no controlling authority to manage the day-to-day affairs.