The Fishermen “Koibortya”
Md Akhlas Uddin
Once the rules were, any one who has fishing net can catch fishes anywhere. now the rules has changed , where the original fisherman now – can not catch fish everywhere. All the water lands are gone to the hands of leaseholder. The local fishermen who are known as “koibortya” in local language can do fishing only in 2-3 months during the rainy season but as soon as the water level reduce due to season changes, the rivers, lake, haor are gone to the hands of leaseholder. In these 2-3 months the fishermen passed a hard time in every year, rest of the 6 month they can work for those leaseholders if they want. Many of them have no other alternative so they traveled there with the whole family and made temporary home in some small island of the haor, about slavery in their lives. They exchange their fish for the three-part that is the leaseholder get 70% fish and they will get only 30% of fishes they caught in whole period. They have a tough time and they can get such a small money which is not enough to buy their necessary goods, their daily needs, even if any one of the family become sick they have to traveled a long distance (8-10km minimum) because Hospitals and doctors are not available around the places they live. These original fisherman or Koibortya’s are coming from different cities of They bring goat, chicken and other domestic animals while come, so that they can get some food in their tough time. Unfortunately some of the leaseholder cheated these poor fishermen in the end of their contract period. Sometimes they did not get their actual payments. This one reason many of them did not come again in the next season. On the other hand many of the local fishermen have to steal fishes in night due to poverty.
I am Md. Akhlas Uddin, 38, Freelance Photographer. Bangladeshi, I living permanently Sylhet District in Bangladesh.
