Fishcopfed plans to develop Assam as a gateway to enter the north east and held a fruitful meeting with the state cooperative minister Mr Parimal Vidya Shukla last month.
B K Mishra, MD of Fishcopfed raised the issue of owning up an Acqua-shop with the Minister who seemed open to the ideas. “I am overall very encouraged by the response of the BJP govt in Assam as they showed matching response to our plans”, said Mishra to Indian Cooperative soon after the meeting.
”Mr Vaidya the Minister agreed to the idea of acqua shop in which we would sell fish related stuff such as fish food and fish medicine, etc,” added Mishra.
”Since we want to use Assam as a nodal point we also wish to have a training centre in Guwahati. I have requested the Minister either to give us space for setting up the training Centre or allow us to take over the existing fishermen training Centre”, MD MD noted. .
Readers would recall Fishcopfed has also begun All-India marketing of dry fish. Fish is dried at its unit in Gopalpur in Odisha through solar drying instead of Sun-drying. Dry fish is popular in north-eastern states and Fishcopfed is focusing on it.
In Guwahati Fishcopfed has a Regional Office which it aims to use to the hilt. “We have a number of staff members and we need business to keep them engaged” stated Mishra who is worried about the future of Fishcopfed in the wake of growing govt apathy.
Losses incurred on account of the held-up service charges on insurance services to the fishermen have thrown the profit-making cooperative into red in the last financial year. ”We are carrying on till we have remainder of the past earnings but how long will they last is anybody’s guess”, said Mishra.