Meghalaya State Planning Board aided fisheries to be inspected

Staff Correspondent

Shillong, July 24: Chairman of the Meghalaya State Planning Board (MSPB) Lambor Malngiang made it very clear that an inspection will be carried to find out the utility of the fisheries that have been partially been aided through the state aqua mission.

While the state is expected to be in the grip of fish shortage due to the sudden ban of imported fishes following the detection of formalin, the chairman of the MSPB told a group of newspersons that the huge shortage of locally produced fishes is due lackluster implementation of the schemes by the beneficiaries. “Under the aqua mission, 27,000 ponds have been set up and if each pond produce 1000 metric tonnes annually, the state would have produced 27,000 metric tonnes of fishes”, stated Malngiang while pointing at the official report that Meghalya imported 31,000 metric tonnes of fishes from states like Andhr Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and Assam. He said had the number of fish ponds that are been financially been aided by the government generate the domestic requirement the deficit of imported fishes could have been reduced drastically. Sadly enough, only 6000 metric tonnes of domestic fishes reaches the market.

Ruing to the fact that most of the pond owners who have availed the state government financial aid prefers to use them as gambling in the form of angling competition, the chairman stated, “It’s about time that we have a comprehensive mechanism to check all such misuse to achieve the state government’s purpose of having an aqua mission under the Integrated basin development programme.”