Malkangiri: Taking the initiative to make tribal people of Malkangiri district self-sufficient, the administration has inaugurated a hi-tech pisciculture project by feeding fishlings into large mesh-enclosures on Satiguda reservoir of district headquarters Thursday.
It was part of the state government’s initiative to feed fishlings worth Rs 20 crores into different water bodies of Malkangiri district, out of a corpus fund of Rs 100 crore granted by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for development of the district. Notably, Rs 7.5 lakh was spent to feed fishlings into Satiguda reservoir in the first phase, a report said.
According to sources, ten mesh-enclosures (5 metres in length, width and height) floating on the reservoir were tied together and fishlings were fed. This was inaugurated by District Collector Manish Agarwal. The fishery department will make arrangement for 200 more enclosures in near future, Collector informed.
Nearly 20,000 fishlings of Jalang species were fed into the enclosures. It was estimated that the project would benefit over 500 fish farmers of Satiguda cooperative society in Malkangiri and would earn around Rs 15 lakhs in a year as the fishlings grow up.
Deputy directors of fishery department Sashikant Acharya, Suresh Chandra Behera respectively from Cuttack and Jeypore, district fishery officer Hemant Kumar Dash including many other senior officials and society members attended the programme.