KARACHI, Feb 13: A senior elected director of the Fishermen Cooperative Society on Saturday accused the government of directly interfering into the affairs of the FCS and imposing its policies on fishermen as if the FCS was a state-owned concern.

Talking to Dawn, the senior member of the Board of Directors, Saleem Deedag pointed out that the crucial meeting of the board had been postponed by the government for the third time recently because, as he put it, they government wanted to impose its self-styled political leadership.

He said that the government was bent upon doing so despite a clear-cut stand adopted by the elected directors that they would not accept appointment of any politician to the most prestigious slot of FCS chairman.

He regretted that the FCS was the only NGO in the country which was governed administratively by (provincial) government and its elected directors who represented fishermen community were subservient to government functionaries.

He claimed that the society had been crippled financially last year when a political figure was made its chairman. He further claimed that the financial management of the FCS always showed an improvement under the control of a senior public servant.

In this context, he made mention of better commission recovery in a short span of time and proper curtailment of unnecessary lavish expenditure. Mr Deedag said that his views on FCS affairs were identical to those of the other six elected directors.

"We all believe that if the government was really serious in overcoming the persisting leadership crisis in the FCS, it should refrain from nominating any political figure to the board."

He said the crisis would be over as soon as the directors (both elected and nominated) were allowed to elect a chairman and a vice-chairman in a free and fair manner.

He further stated that the elected directors would have no objection even the senior bureaucrat heading the FCS managing committee was nominated as chairman of the society.

He recalled that the bureaucrat had emerged as a consensus candidate when the first meeting of the 15-member board had been convened soon after the Aug 4, 2004 election.