Delta State on Tuesday rejected 60,000 fingerlings donated to it by Agip Oil Company for not meeting specification.
Chief Austin Chikezie, the state’s Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, told newsmen that over 60,000 of 100,000 fingerlings supplied by Agip fell below specification.
He said Agip promised to donate 100,000 fingerlings to the state government hence government invited 100 registered and verified fish farmers to benefit from the donation.
He said government had planned that each farmer could get at least 1,000 fingerlings to encourage and enable them break-even after their transportation and other expenses.
Chikezie said the situation where only about 20,000 fingerlings were supplied made it difficult for most farmers to receive up to 100 fingerlings after much stress and expenses.
The commissioner said though it was free and part of the company’s corporate social responsibilities to the state, the reason for the rejection was that the fishes were “fries, not fingerlings”.
Chikezie said: “We are here to distribute the fingerlings donated to the State government by Agip.
“But I am not satisfied at all.
“Sometime last week they came to inform us that they have 100,000 fingerlings to give to our farmers and we invited our farmers, but it turned out that the brought only 22,000 fingerlings.
“When we reported to their head office, they asked us to assemble our farmers today that they will be bringing the remaining of about 70,000 fingerlings.
“And we are here today only to observe that what they came with is less than 20,000 fingerlings that met the specification and most farmers may not get up to 100 fingerlings each to go home with.
“About 60,000 of them are fries and I won’t allow any farmer to take them because their mortality rate is high.”
Chikezie said the state had so far received 42,000 fingerlings that met the specification and would be looking forward for another 58,000 fingerlings from Agip.
The commissioner, however, advised the farmers, particularly those who could not get from this batch, to bear with the state government as the situation would be addressed.
Fidelis Agwumafa, Fishery Officer of Agip in River State, said he had brought a total of 100,000 fingerlings to the state for distribution to farmers.
According to Agwumafa, the first batch supplied last week to the state was 30,000 and another 70,000 on Tuesday, bringing the total to the 100,000 pledged by Agip.
He said: “Today, I brought in 70,000 fingerlings, but there are issues now because of the variation in size.
“About 10,000 of the them are jumbo size, while the 60,000 are fingerlings.
“And because some people have collected the big ones, the rest people are saying that they cannot collect the others because they are too small.”
Agwumafa, however, assured that the smaller fingerlings could survive in spite of size and pleaded with the farmers to accept them.
The fingerlings were, however, distributed to those farmers who were willing to accept them.
Some of the beneficiaries thanked the state government and Agip for the gesture and appealed to them to improve on the quality of fingerlings to reduce mortality.
Charles Obianwuna, a fish farmer, said he was not satisfied with the supplies, adding that apart from the size of the fish, 60 per cent of the supplies were dead fingerlings.
Obianwuna said: “The fishes were subjected to very harsh conditions; that was why many of them died.
“The suppliers must take more precautionary measures while transporting them next time.”
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