Social and economic condition of fisher families With reference to Gandara fishing village

Abstract

Fisheries Industry is considered an asset in a country like Sri Lanka. Fisheries Industry has become more and more advantageous due to the most ideal geographical conditions of Sri Lanka surrounded completely by sea. Fishery falls into Three (03) categories namely, brine, offshore and brackish. Above all brine fisheries take priority. In many countries people in coastal region depend on fishery. Approximately 1% of the population in any SAARC country depends on fishery. To date the approximate number of people engaged in fishery in Sri Lanka is 140,000. Also when considering Sri Lanka’s exports, the contribution of fishery to gross domestic production is about 2%. Therefore So it is quite important to study the social and economic conditions of the people engaged with fishery and identify the issues encountered by them. The sole purpose of this research is to study the social and economic conditions of the people engaged in fisheries industry in Sri Lanka. Another objective of this research is to study the difficulties encountered by the people engaged in fishery. In this research, Gandara fishing village in Gandara northern Grama Niladhari Division belonging to Dewinuwara Divisional Secretarial in the Matara district of Southern Province has been selected as the area of the study. 25% of the families in that division were randomly taken as a sample. The primary data were collected by a questionaire survey while the secondary data for this study were determined from books, magazines, reports and Internet. The conclusions made through this research are as follows. This fisher community has been prevailing for a long time. Many of the people in this community have had fishing as the main source of income. When considering their education, lots of them are in a very poor situation. On the other hand those who could reach the Advanced Level are about 6% from the population in the community and is a very poor low percentage. Specially this condition has been caused due to their occupation. Also the majority of men in this village are adapted to liquor. On the other hand when considering the economic background , the tasks of the fishery falls in to three categories as Fishing, Selling fish by buying fish from fishermen and Hiring boats. Majority of the people in this village are fisherman receive low benefits though they can have higher opportunity cost. However, another significant thing is, the people who do this occupation cannot receive similar income throughout the year because they tend to earn money from informal financial sector.