Hundreds of fishermen protest against Secretariat proposal at Foreshore Estate

Fishermen living in 64 villages from Tiruvallur to Chengalpattu on Tuesday continued to peg their hopes on Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay to withdraw the G.O. issued regarding the construction of the secretariat at Foreshore Estate. Hundreds of fishermen and women, who staged a protest near Srinivasapuram, said they believed the Chief Minister had their welfare at heart.

Community leader K. Bharathi, who has been spearheading the movement, pointed out that Minister Aadhav Arjuna had said that if asked to choose between fishermen and the secretariat, the Chief Minister would naturally go for the welfare of the fishermen. “We are hoping that the current proposal would be dropped and an alternative land would be chosen for the secretariat,” he said.

Local residents took out a silent march from their villages to the venue of the protest. Black flags planted on the sands fluttered in the wind as leader after leader urged the government to change its stand as otherwise their livelihoods would be affected badly. “We won’t have any freedom to carry on with our lives or unload our fish near the sands,” said Kabaddi Maran, a community leader.

Roobesh, another community leader, said that the State government must return lands belonging to the fishermen that were taken over and became houses for government staff. “Many of those buildings were demolished several years ago. There were several proposals including construction of a large complex. The land on which All India Radio stands today belonged to Nochikuppam,” he said.

Viji of Srinivasapuram, the other leader bringing people together, said that fishermen had been demanding that around ten thousand slum clearance board tenements should be demolished and reconstructed. Some of these buildings were constructed during former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj’s time and also in the 1970s. There has been no maintenance after the tsunami of 2004. We also want the government to construct homes for non-fishermen who live amongst us in these villages,” he demanded.