Kakinada: Modern Telecom Technology has come to the rescue of fishermen in the Hudhud cyclone, as many lives as well as their fishing gears were saved.
The government departments and private agencies alerted the fishermen about the threat posed by Hudhud. They were warned not to venture in to the sea right from October 7.
MS Swaminathan Rese-arch Foundation (MSSRF) has been giving information and alerts of potential fish zones, weather conditions in the sea to the fishermen for the past three years, with the help of Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) to 3,500 fishermen in six districts like Visakhapatnam, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, East and West Godavari Districts.
MSSRF launched a help -line and deployed an employee to alert the fishermen at regular intervals. The service was of great use to the fishermen. Now the fishermen want to express their thanks to the authorities for the alert system and the agencies involved in it.
“We did not take the warnings of the authorities regarding Hudhud first , however the frequent alerts by MSSRF asking the fisher folk not to venture into the deep seas prevented many fishermen from venturing in to the seas as it was dangerous.
The fishing equipment like nets, boats and other equipment were kept in safe places. It has benefitted them a lot," said Kakinada Mechanized Boat Owners Welfare Association secretary, N Dharma Rao.
He said that they were very thankful for the PM, CM INCOIS, MSSRF and other agencies for providing the important information.
Though the fishermen are not educated, they are comfortable using mobile phones and other gadgets, the MSSRF senior scientist, R Subramanian said. He said the information regarding sea conditions and potential fishermen zone and others received by INCOIS is being sent through voice message to the fishermen, every 24 hours, for the past three years.
KMBO Welfare Asso-ciation president, Mat-hadi Kamaraju, said that the GPS service is more useful to them economically and is time saving process.
