Future of shrimp cultivation
Harun ar Rashid Daulatpur, Khulna
It is needless to mention that shrimp cultivation in the southern part of our country plays a vital role in earning foreign exchange and has generated employment for thousands of people. If we consider catching of fish fry (Pona) from natural sources like rivers and sea-shores as the beginning, the whole process ends with export of frozen shrimps to foreign countries. Still the cultivators in our country are in primitive stage and solely dependent on nature and we often see the news item 'virus attack' which may be in an epidemic form that can destroy the whole farming. But if you ask the fisheries department for any help against such 'virus', you will seldom get any positive answer and thus a poor cultivator loses everything, leaving behind a huge amount of loan taken from banks, NGO's or Mahajans. These group of cultivators have no association, no forum, nor can they ask the government for any help to cope with an unexpected situation. The entire government machinery is helping only the factory owners who have got a strong association; they can sit with high officials and ministers, MP's and so on for their cash subsidy, interest waiver etc. on the plea of incurring heavy losses. Then what will be the fate of those cultivators who are working at the field level and earning foreign exchange?
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