Shrimp culture project gets Rs 20 crores

Port Blair, Jul 7: Minister of state for Commerce Jairam Ramesh today said that the government is investing Rs 20 crore within the next five years for shrimp culture in Andaman in spite of earlier objections by the Marine Products Export Development Authority.

They would be producing the second generation disease-free Broodstock in these islands.

Andaman is the only state in India where disease-free mother shrimps are found. Three years from now, it will start flowing to the rest of India from the breeding centre, he added.

However, the Farmers in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were in a fix as the administration's plan to start a shrimp culture as 'an alternative livelihood option' is likely to be nipped in the bud.

The Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) is going ahead with its project to produce specific pathogen-free shrimp brooders or parent shrimps in the islands.

MPEDA had asked the Centre to ban shrimp culture in the islands to block the inflow of infected shrimp seeds from the mainland but they oppose this.

''If shrimp culture is banned, what would 1,400 families in the archipelago, who lost their land to tsunami, do?'' asked chairman of Andaman Zilla Parishad Mr R Chidamabaram.

The export development authority said that the shrimp produced in the mainland is prone to infections like the White Spot Virus (WSV) and feared the virus might affect shrimp production in the islands.

However, the minister had made it clear that the project would not be at the cost of all those 1400 tsunami-hit families, who had been promised by the state government to cultivate shrimp in tsunami inundated land.

''I believe both projects are important. We have to rehabilitate these 1400 families and at the same time we need to develop pathogen free Broodstock,'' he reiterated.

UNI