Mangaluru: The initial euphoria of fishermen was short-lived as soon as they learnt that interim finance minister Piyush Goyal had announced a separate department for fisheries , and not a ministry.The Coastal Karnataka Fishermen’s Action Committee expressed its anguish over the proposal clearly unhappy with the decision. The committee has been pushing for a separate ministry to address problems of fishermen.Manohar Boloor, president of the committee, said that there are nine fishing states on the east and west coast of the country plus four Union territories where fishing is carried out extensively. This is not fair, he felt.Committee general secretary Vasudev Boloor said that the fisheries department, currently under the ministry of agriculture, has not done justice to the aspirations of fishermen.Manohar said: Though we are under the ministry of agriculture, facilities farmers get we do not. We come under GST. Earlier we had sales tax exemption. The only hope is that since it is an interim budget , in case NDA comes to power again, they may increase the allocation according to the need.In his budget speech Goyal had announced that India is the second largest fish producing nation in the world, accounting for 6.3 per cent of global production. To provide sustained and focused attention towards development of this sector, our government has decided to create a separate department of fisheries.

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