Faiza Tehseen

Establishment of fishing harbour or seaport engineering institutes is badly needed to rehabilitate the existing harbours and fish landing sites to boost the country’s fisheries sector. Talking to WealthPK, Sikander Akram, Deputy Director of Inland Fisheries, Balochistan, said with the passage of time, Pakistan’s existing harbours had become dysfunctional. “The Pasni fish harbour, which was established in 1992, is dysfunctional due to heavy sedimentation.”

He said Pasni fish harbour had already completed its lifespan of 25 years. He said the harbour’s rehabilitation cost had been estimated to be Rs1.6 billion, which would increase if its overhaul was not undertaken right away. “The bad condition of the harbour is hitting the profit margins of local fishing communities, forcing them to shift their whole catch to Karachi fish harbour for export.” 

Sikandar Akram said the fisheries sector could be turned into a major contributor to Pakistan’s socioeconomic development if proper steps were taken for its uplift. “Lack of proper maintenance, rehabilitation and inappropriate infrastructure are making this sector lag behind.” He said along the coast of Pakistan, there were about 70 major and minor fish landing sites, including two fish harbours in Balochistan and three in Sindh, besides a few floating jetties. “All fish landing sites were planned without allocation of operational, depreciation, maintenance, or rehabilitation budgeting and framework. Most of them are inadequately utilised and dysfunctional due to many reasons, including pollution, rubbish, residues, etc.” 

Sikandar Akram said development of cold chains was an essential component of fish landing sites and harbours, as lack of it was causing 40-50% post-harvest losses. “Overall mix or wild catch from the Balochistan coastline is about 160,000 metric tonnes annually, but almost 85% of this goes to Karachi because of lack of facilities for further processing of the fish in Balochistan. Such facilities should be made available to the fishermen in Balochistan to enable them to process and export their catch from their own province.”   The Balochistan fisheries official said as China excelled in harbour, seaport and fish landing sites engineering, Pakistan should acquire such expertise from China to establish modern fishing harbours in the country. “The establishment of in-kind institutes through Chinese help will help revolutionise this sector in Pakistan,” Akram concluded. 

Credit: Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk