CHENNAI: Fishermen in the city are asking for relief measures to be given out on the basis of individual fishermen and not on the basis of family cards. Welcoming the Chief Minister’s move to enhance fishing relief to Rs 2,000 from Rs 1,000, fisherfolk requested the State to consider this approach as well.Earlier, welfare measures were released to the respective beneficiary based on their membership in Fishing Cooperative Societies. Youth from the fishing hamlets were registered with these societies when they turned 18.However, they do not evince interest in getting themselves enrolled in the identity cards issued by the State. Many fishermen prefer to live together in the same house even after marriage and do not have their names deleted from their family card. As a result, each family card usually has more than one family using it.Meanwhile, the Central government has rolled out a scheme to provide bio-metric identity cards to every fisherfolk living in the country. South Indian Fishermen Welfare Association president K Bharathi told Express the fishermen prefer to live in joint families.“Those trying to get a separate family card after they chose to live as nuclear families deem the task as Herculean,” he said.“Every individual fisher will have his own financial priorities to be taken care of and that would not be possible with the `2,000 provided for the joint family,” he added.“Therefore, it would be of great help if the scheme was altered to benefit individual fishermen either through cooperative societies or through the identity cards issued either by the State or by the Centre,” he suggested. Biometric data of all the fishermen in the city were collected by the Centre and the cards were yet to be disbursed.Over 10,000 fishermen from the city are expected to return to their routine deep sea fishing after the annual fishing ban issued by the State government ended on Tuesday.
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