Despite the COVID-19 pandemic across the world, the villagers of Phisami village under Kiphire district started fish farming, although their main occupation is jhum and terrace cultivation.
During off season, the villagers cultivate other organic produces for sustenance. Villagers also dig fishery ponds mostly through manual labour so as to augment the family income.
Atoka, primary teacher interacting with Nagaland Post said that he has listed a total of 398 fishery ponds, out of which about 20-30 fisheries were dug by machines and the rest done by manual labour. According to him, the source of income from the entire household is approximately 2 lakhs per year for selling fingerlings and fish among the villagers. He added that the around 10,000 fingerlings were brought from Dimapur during 2019 from private arrangement, and this year around 20-30 thousand fingerlings were brought from different sources.
During this initial stage, Atoka said the people of the village were in the process of purchasing fingerlings as in the coming years there is high scope of fish supply to the district markets etc. He also expressed that no financial assistance from the department was received yet, but in 2019 the Land Resources department (LRD) Kiphire distributed some fingerlings to fish farmers.
For lack of assistance from Fishery department, he informed that fish famers connect water supply through traditional irrigation and rubber pipe for rearing fish.
He also added that the fishery ponds were not protected, whereby otter and birds eat away maximum fishes leading to huge loss of the investment for fish farmers. On a brighter note, he informed that village was expecting spot verification from the Fishery department by end of the year. If this happens, Atoka was optimistic that it will boost the usage of modern technologies for fish production on a larger scale.