Not the one to accept defeat easily Fishcopfed MD B K Mishra said the apex cooperative body for fishermen has opened several new business lines to earn and stay afloat. “Besides CIFAX we have also launched several other activities in order to make up for losses incurred on account of the held-up service charges on Insurance services to the fishermen, Mishra said.
Fishcopfed has many ambitious plans up its sleeve to come out of the red. It has 2 mobile fish vans as of now but it intends increasing it to 20. “We have four fish shops so far but we intend to increase the number to 50”, said MD.
“We propose to go about the expansion through PPP model as we have not enough staff to man the growing activities. We invite our member-societies and others also to be part of the Fishcopfed venture”, said Mishra.
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 these areas.
It has also embarked on production of fish tank and marketing of ornamental fish for the consumers of Delhi and NCR. For this we are using basement of our office at Sarita Vihar in Delhi, informed Mishra.
On the ministerial and bureaucratic front the newly elected Chairman T.Prasad Rao Dora along with the MD have met everybody who matters- from Ministers to bureaucrats. B K Mishra called it a protocol visit by the newly elected Chairman.
Readers would note that the pending service-charge issue of insurance scheme has suddenly made a profit-making Fishcopfed into a loss-making entity. For four years in a row the service-charge has been held-up in the govt files forcing Fsihcopfed to make desperate attempts to survive somehow.
“We have met the Union Minister, State Ministers, Secretaries and Joint Secretaries in a span of just two days. It was very heartening to see their response, MD Mr B K Mishra told Indian Cooperative.
“Fishermen are mostly uneducated and without us being around, the schemes would not reach out to them and if they do, fishermen would not be able to get their claims”, said Mishra.
Indian Cooperative is witness to a meeting in which Fishcopfed played an effective role between officials of Oriental Insurance on one side and fishermen on the other. High-sounding govt projects come to a naught if there is nobody to implement them faithfully, Mishra underlined.
