A bend in the sluice gate No. 31 of Durgapur Barrage on Saturday that caused the upper catchment area of the Damodar river to dry up has rendered over 5,000 fishermen in Durgapur and Bankura’s Borjora jobless.

Reason: most of the fish have been swept away to the lower catchment areas through the damaged gate. Many fish have died without water.

The livelihood of fishermen in Durgapur and Bankura depends majorly on the Damodar river. Catch is better in the upper catchment area and meets about 30 per cent of the demand for fish in the Durgapur-Bankura region. Damodar is known for rohu, catla, tilapia, and small prawns.

Durgapur fisherman Swapan Biswas said the damage to the Durgapur Barrage was a fresh blow to them just when they were struggling to come out of losses in the Covid-induced lockdown since March.

“We haven’t been able to catch fish since Saturday. This has again hit our income after the prolonged lockdown,” he said. “The damage to the barrage is a fresh blow,” said Swapan, who sells around a quintal of fish to wholesalers in Durgapur and nearby.

The damage to the Durgapur Barrage has hit fish supply to the markets of Durgapur and Bankura.

“Local fishermen don’t have catch. We have to depend on fishermen from other districts like East Midnapore and North 24-Parganas, and states like Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh,” said a fish wholesaler in Durgapur.

Goutam Biswas, another fish trader, who normally sells around one quintal fish to markets in Durgapur and sends consignments to Siliguri every day, remembered when in 2017 another sluice gate of the barrage was damaged. “We could not catch fish for three months,” said Goutam.

In 2017, after the gate’s repair, the fisheries and irrigation departments had jointly released carp in the Damodar. It had taken three months for the carp to grow and be caught for sale.

Repair status

The Durgapur Barrage crisis has been compounded as the irrigation department missed its Tuesday deadline to start restoring the damaged sluice gate. An irrigation engineer said the area needed to be dry for repairs to start. “The work is not easy as the monsoon continued till September-end and it rained in early October too. Small rivers linked to Damodar are posing a challenge to our job,” he said. Sources said even if work started it would need at least 36 hours or more to finish.