Odisha urges Centre to provide customized Boats for Coastal Security

Odisha Government urged Home Ministry to provide adequate number of customized boats for Coastal Security.

The first meeting of the newly formed State Level Committee (SLC) for coastal security was held under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Padhi in secretariat conference hall on Friday.

The issues relating to strengthening of costal security, distribution of identity cards to sea going fishermen, fixing of distress alert transmitters in the boats going inside the sea etc were discussed in the meeting.

Reviewing the progress made so far, Chief Secretary Padhi requested the Director, Ministry of Home Affairs to supply adequate number of boats customizing them for Odisha coast.

Padhi also requested the Ministry to do adequate provisions for running, patrolling and maintenance of the boats.

Taking stock of the functioning of marine police, Chief Secretary directed the respective departments to

Intensify the training activities for marine police and make them robust for sea patrolling and sea chasing. Padhi also directed to take up intensive awareness building activities for the fishermen community about the security measure they need to follow while going into the sea.

Replying to a media quarry after the meeting, Principal Secretary Home Asit Tripathy said, “as of now 18 marine police stations are functioning in the State and we have got 13 boats. The boats supplied do not fit to Odisha coast and creeks. They also need large jetties. The boats need to be customized so that the requirement for jetties can be reduced and the boats can also ply in the creeks”.

Sri Tripathy further added, “We are issuing identity cards to the fishermen going into the sea. There are around 3 lakh fishermen and so far 2, 60,000 cards have been issued. The fishermen must carry the cards with them while going for fishing into the sea. Apart from that steps have been taken for installation of Distress Alter Transmitters (DAT) in the sea going boats.

The fishermen can send immediate signal about any distress condition inside the sea so that coast guard or naval force can come to their rescue immediately. We need around 8000 such DAT machines for the boats.