A new fishing harbour at Akkaraipettai near here has come up. So far, fishermen have been using a small piece of land belonging to the Maritime Board, a heavily congested area, for landing and anchoring their boats. So, the Fisheries Department took up the work at Akkaraipettai where the work was executed at an estimate of Rs.45.21 crore under the World Bank-funded Emergency Tsunami Rehabilitation Package (ETRP) scheme. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa declared open the harbour on Wednesday. The harbour, on the backwaters of the Kaduvaiaru, runs to a cumulative length of 750 metres – 250 metres on the north and 500 metres on the south. While the construction of the harbour on the northern side was completed about a couple of years ago and boats had been anchored there, dredging on the southern side was completed recently, according to sources. As many as 750 boats can be anchored in this area, at the rate of a metre for each boat. The harbour would have other state-of-the-art facilities including 100-tonne capacity crane, road facility, net mending unit, washing the fish-crates, a generator room and other essential services. Road and street lights had been provided. Fishermen point out that the harbour would facilitate not only easy landing but also proper maintenance of boats. They said that they had to incur a huge expenditure for transit of boats from the water to the shore. Ahead of the opening of the harbour, O.S. Manian, Minister for Handlooms and Textiles, accompanied by officials inspected the site on Tuesday.
2016, The Hindu