Protesting fishermen demand Sindh govt to remove FCS chairman

KARACHI: Fishermen leaders at a protest on Friday alleged that the Sindh government had not been removing the Fishermen Cooperation Society’s chairman for his alleged involvement in corruption despite the protests by the fishermen community.

The Karachi Mahigir Ittehad, a fishermen body, organised the demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club. A large number of fishermen from the city’s various coastal areas, including islands of Baba and Bhit, Ibrahim Hadiri, Rehri Goth, Maripur, Khadda and Kalri, attended the demonstration to register their protest against Hafiz Abdul Bar, the FCS’s chairman.

Dr Yousaf, the newly elected director of the FCS, while speaking to the protestors, said they had been demanding the Sindh government to remove the FCS chairman for his involvement in corruption, illegal recruitment and causing heavy losses to the institution by selling its properties and spending the money deposited in the banks.

“But it seems that the Sindh government has been backing Hafiz Abdul Bar in his all illegal acts,” he said. Other speakers also urged the Pakistan Peoples Party-led provincial government to “initiate an inquiry against the corrupt officials, including Rab, who had ruined the FCS funds and deprived the fishermen community people of their basic rights in the past”.

The FCS was established in 1945 in Khadda, under the Cooperative Societies Act-1925. At that time, it functioned as a commercial entity aimed at import fisheries inputs such as fishing nets and nylon threads. When the Karachi Fish Harbour was established in the late 1950s by then field marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan, the FCS was given the responsibility to manage and operate it and also to work for fishermen’s welfare. The FCS nominates its agents called mole holders who provide facilities to fishermen in selling the catch and charge 6.25 percent commission — half of which is kept by the mole holders and the other half is given to the FCS to support its operations.