Work out relief for oil spill victims, Fisheries dept told

The Fisheries Department, in its compliance report, had stated that, “104 km of coastal area in Tiruvallur, Chennai and Kanchipuram district was affected by the oil spill. As per the report submitted by fisheries officials, livelihood loss incurred by fisher folk is Rs 203.22 crore. 

Accordingly, a proposal has been sent to the government.” Advocate K Mageswaran, Counsel for petitioner, Meenava Thanthai K R Selvaraj Kumar represented by its president, M R Thiyagarajan, had argued that there was no clear idea on how the department arrived at. He said that of the 1.1 lakh victims, only 20,000 forms were collected for final compensation. The Counsel also added that, on July 6, the court directed the Fisheries Department to collect the pending compensation application forms and after examining that, arrive at a final figure. 

“Based on the orders given by the NGT during the previous hearing, the Fisheries Department conducted the meeting with the members of the association. Officials said that fishermen can apply for compensation. But the department accepted only 20,000 applications, while ordering the officials not to accept the rest. The court ordered the Fisheries department to accept the pending 80,000 applications within the next two weeks and six weeks from that point, examine the forms to arrive at a final compensation figure,” he said.