Barisal Correspondent :
A total of 388 fishermen were jailed for 7-day to 1-year, 393 fined Tk. 19.71 lakhs and 781 cases were lodged till 4 pm on Wednesday afternoon by operating 486 mobile courts in 733 drives against violating Hilsa fishing ban in Barisal Division.
Shamsul Alam, Divisional Engineer of Fisheries Department and duty officer of the control room opened in this connection at Barisal, gave this statistics.
Besides, giving punishments to the fishermen, 9.51 metric tons Hilsa, 47.87 lakh meters fishing nets worth Tk 10.58 core and 13 fishing boats seized during till this report in last 11-day drives, the control room sources said.
According to the statistics given by the control room further disclosed that during theses drives 73 fish loading points, 515 fishing stations, 1416 fish whole selling places and 864 fish markets were inspected by fishery department along with administrative and law enforcing agency officials.
Bazlur Rashid, deputy director and divisional fishery officer told, government has imposed an 11-day ban on catching, selling and transporting of Hilsa beginning on October 5 across the country to ensure safe spawning and protecting the Hilsa fish population.
Hilsa fish lays eggs in plenty during this period-Ashwin-Kartik, five days before and after of Baro Purnima-the government imposed the restriction on catching the delicious fish to enhance production, he added.
On other hand, Bimal Das, District Fisheries Officer (Hilsa), giving breakups of Barisal district in this statistics, said 124 fishermen jailed, 246 fined Tk. 10.01 lakhs and 370 cases lodged by operating 106 mobile courts in 195 drives against violating Hilsa fishing ban in Barisal district till 4:00 PM Wednesday afternoon.
District Fisheries Officer (Hilsa) further disclosed that during theses drives 23 fish loading points, 74 fishing stations, 181 fish whole selling places and 243 fish-markets were inspected, 2.19 metric tons Hilsa, 22.60 lakh meters fishing nets worth Tk 4.46 cores were seized by fishery department along with administrative and law enforcing agency officials till this report during 11-day drives.
