Despite there being a huge demand of dried-fish caught and processed from Chalanbeel areas, production of fish has been decreased alarmingly at the Beel now-a days. As a result, more than five hundred dried-fish producing villages and thousands of fishermen dependent on dried-fish processing and production are in distress.
It is learnt, once the Chalanbeel fishermen used to catch fishes from various Beel, ponds and water bodies and sold those in local markets. Excess unsold fishes were dried at various villages and those were sold throughout the country and even abroad.
The processing of dried fish needed a tedious job. At first, housewives of villages used to cut those and clean those and were sorted according to species. Then those were kept on a bamboo made ‘Chatal’ (mat) for drying those. People are needed to watch round the clock to save those fishes from the attack of birds, dogs, cats or any other predators.
It requires about four to five months to process dried fishes for marketing. Once, the fishermen used to earn millions of taka from selling these dried fishes but scarcity of fishes now-a-days have forced many fishermen to abandon their ancestral profession.
The fishermen of the Chalanbeel villages said, there are many reasons for the scarcity of fish in the Chalanbeel. Of those, absence of water round the year is the main one. They said, once the Chalanbeel held water all round the year as more than fifty rivers and tributaries cress-crossed the Beel. But, now-a-days, all those rivers are dried up and instead of fish; paddy is cultivated at the dried river beds of Chalanbeel. Use of excessive chemical fertilizers and pesticides during the dry season and catching of fish-fry and mother fish are also reasons for destroying fish resources of the Chalanbeel.
Rahima, Sumita and Salam of Panihar village under Singra upazila informed, even two-decades ago, the villagers of Chalanbeel used to catch huge fishes of different species and dried those to sell to the Mahajons and Farias who rushed to the Beel villages from various parts of the country to purchase dried fishes.
They informed, sweet water dried fishes had a special demand from the people of the country and abroad. But, now the rivers and Beel being dried up, the Beel people themselves are suffering from want of fishes.
Jamal Hossain, dried fish trader of Chalanbeel area said, now the market price of dried fish is almost the half of its production cost. So, the fishermen were incurring a huge loss in producing and selling of dried fish at the Chalanbeel areas He also said some syndicate gangs were controlling dried fish trade in Chalanbeel areas. As a result, poor fishermen, small investors and traders are not being able to compete with those syndicates.
Hundreds of Dried fish traders of Bhangura, Faridpur, Chatmohor, Boraigram, Gurudaspur, Tarash, Raiganj, Ullapara and Singra upazilas are now extremey worried for their future. They demanded to the government to take measure against the syndicate members, to take initiative to retain features of Chalanbeel and to save the dried fish traders and their ancestral profession.
