Baramulla: A woman farmer in Sultanpora Kandi suffered huge loss Friday morning when she found entire shoals of trout fish in her farm floating dead over the ponds – seemingly due to accidental or deliberate chemical contamination.
The incident has left the farmer Rubeena Akhter, wife of Tahir Ahmad Lone of Sultanpura Kandi in Baramulla devastated.
According to locals, the farmer had invested a significant amount of money and resources into setting up the fish farm. And now at a time when her produce was ready for sale during the holy month of Ramzan, today morning she woke up to see her fish dead.
“Yesterday evening I fed my fishes normally but today morning I saw them floating over the surface. This is because the water coming to the ponds at my farm may have been contaminated, possibly with some fungicide or pesticide,” Akhter said.
The farmer immediately alerted the local fisheries authorities, who sent a team to the spot and launched an investigation into the matter. Subsequently, Assistant Director Fisheries, District Baramulla Sopore, also constituted a committee to ascertain the factual position about mortality of stock at Akhter’s trout fish farm.
“In order to have factual position a committee is constituted to have a visit of the site and send a detailed report to this office within two days for further course of action, ” reads an order ADF/Bla/2022-23/2456-59 Dated: 24-03-23 in this regard.
The aggrieved farmer, it goes without saying, has suffered huge losses. Locals are demanding immediate compensation to the victim, so that she is able to reestablish her unit.
