Hyderabad: Fisheries production will get a push in the State to empower fishermen as the government will take up a program on August 16, according to Animal Husbandry Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav. “This time, we will drop 80 crore fish in assorted 24,000 ponds, water bodies and lakes in the State”, he said.
The minister held a review meeting with officials at Secretariat here and asked them to make necessary arrangements for the fish drive across the State. Srinivas said as per the directive of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, fishermen will get a boost through the drive. “We will be ready on August 16 to drop fish in the lakes, ponds and water bodies in the State as planned.
Talasani said he would drop fish in the lakes at the Kaleshwaram project in Jayashankar Bhupalapally district on August 16. He directed the officials to complete the process of tendering and get ready for the drive of dropping fish in the selected lakes in the districts. He also said all other ministers, MPs, MLAs and MLCs are involved in the fish drive along with local leaders and officials.
“Let us together make the fish dropping program using norms of size and quality and take video graphing of the same by 11 am. We called tenders to drop five crore fish in the lakes and water bodies as the scheme gave better results during the last two years. With Kaleshwaram project, another 20,000 hectares of water bodies came into use in the district”, he said and asked the officials to take steps for hassle-free distribution of licenses, nets and material to market associations in four districts abutting Kaleshwaram project if fishermen are not available.