Big fishing boats face berthing and sailing problems as the country's largest fish harbour is fast losing its draft, fishermen said on Friday. They said boats may scuttle while navigating to berth at the Karachi Fish Harbour because the harbour channel draft has scaled down significantly.
"There may be any accident of the boats sinking from hitting the navigational channel seabed anytime," fishermen feared, saying that the Karachi Fish Harbour Authority (KFHA) had continuously been requested to dredge the channel. "Around 0.1 million square meters area of the harbour's channel would be dredged to deepen it by four meters in line with the port dictum," an official of KFHA told Business Recorder.
The Karachi Port Trust (KPT) had been approached to help the KFHA to deepen the navigational channel draft to ease fishing boats movement, they said, adding that "the matter is pending since the new government has taken over". The fish harbour was last dredged in 1990 which the then EU Commission had financed, officials said, adding that "last dredging of the fish harbour was done through EU grant by an Italian firm M/s "Lodigiani SPA" in 1990, costing the then currency unit of "ECU" 12 million".
Fishermen and boat owners said that their vessels were unable to navigate easily across the channel because its draft was shallow. "The congested channel also causes entanglement to fishing boats," they complained. "It is now very difficult for vessels to move smoothly inside the congested and low-depth harbour channel," they said, adding that there are fears of boats may collapse during their navigation if draft of the harbour continued to lower.
Movements of fishing vessels also suffer from dockyard activities, they said, suggesting the government to build a new navigational channel to help ease passage of boats leading to fisheries. Fishermen said the congested harbour with lowering draft has caused difficulties for fishing vessels to navigate in the channel. They said that around 600 fishing boats move every day through the harbour channel.
The shallow channel draft of fish harbour is also causing accidents of boats and there are fears loaded vessels may scuttle during passage for want of sufficient water at the channel to keep them afloat. The KFHA has its limited financial resources to maintain harbour's facilities as dredging the channel would require huge cost to take place, officials said.
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