Biometrics & Biostatistics International Journal Research Article Open Access Assessing the livelihood status of fishermen at Sunamganj district in Bangladesh Abstract Volume 9 Issue 1 - 2020 Fish is considered as one of the most essential food items that provide proteins to build our Mohammed Amran Hossain,1 Shahnaj Sultana body throughout the world. In Bangladesh, Fish and Fisheries sectors play an immensely Sathi,2 Md. Sabbir Hossain,2 Mst. Farzana important role in terms of nutrition, income, employment generation and foreign exchange 2 2 earnings. Most of the lands in Sunamganj covered by haors and cannals and therefore Akter, Mohammad Ohid Ullah 1 many people in this area are involved in capturing fish than fish farming. In this study we Deputy Director (Deputy Secretary), Local Government, aimed to assess the livelihood status of fishermen at Sunamganj. For this we randomly Deputy Commissioner Office, Bangladesh 2Department of Statistics, Shahjalal University of Science and collected data based on a questionnaire from 425 fishermen during April 2018. We found Technology, Bangladesh most of the fishermen belong to middle age group and had middle family size. Around 56.3% fishermen took loan from different banks while only 3.1% received loan from NGO. Correspondence: Mohammad Ohid Ullah, Department of The financial condition of fishers was observed very poor as the land owned by them was Statistics, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, decreasing day by day. Though there was significant increase in monthly income compare Bangladesh. Email to last 10 years, however it’s not sufficient for better livelihood. Their socio-economic condition doesn’t match with national economic progress. The results of logistic regression Received: February 03, 2020 | Published: February 28, 2020 model shows that earning members had significant influence (OR=1.77, CI: 0.965,3.272, P<0.10) on taking loan, indicates that households with only one earning member are 1.77 times as likely to take loan than household with more than one earning members. That is taking loan is likely to increase around 77% for households with only one earning member. About 89.9% fishermen were afraid about their future earnings due to early/flash flood. Taken together, we may conclude that overall situation of the livelihood status is not so good because of more illiteracy, more loan and natural disasters like flood. So government and non-government organizations should play role to improve their economic status by providing well education to their children as well as give more incentives so that they don’t need to take loan. In addition, need to construct of embankment or dam for protecting them from flood as well. Keywords: Livelihood status, fishermen, Sunamganj, Bangladesh Background beels are located in the districts of Sunamganj, Sylhet, Maulvibazar, Habiganj, Brahmanbaria, Netrokona and Kishoreganj. From the first stage of human civilization, fish is considered as one of the most essential food items throughout the world and it is a major Human capabilities, assets (material and social resources) and protein providing source in Bangladesh.1–3 About 10 percent of the activities which are required for a means of living is livelihood.13 The world’s population depends on fisheries for their livelihoods, and 4.3 fishing communities secure their livelihoods from haor by capturing billion people are reliant on fish for 15 percent of their animal protein fish, fish trading, fish drying, aquatic life and net weaving.14 They are intake.4 In Bangladesh, Fish and Fisheries sector play an immensely one of the most vulnerable and poorest communities in Bangladesh important role in terms of nutrition, income, employment and foreign due to having the income below the marginal level.15 The fishermen exchange earnings.5 Fish is so popular complement to rice in the who take the risk of their lives disregarding storms and rains and catch national diet that Bangladeshis are called Maache-Bhate Bengali (“a fishes to meet the demand of animal protein are mostly deprived of Bengali is made of fish and rice”).6 About 1.78 million people’s full- many amenities of life and are considered as the poorest of the poor.1 time and part-time employment facilities are provided by fisheries.7 Most of them live from hand to mouth. All time they have to struggle This sector also contributes about 60% of the national animal protein to survive. Fishing communities are still the dominant communities in-take and 19% percent of the total protein consumption in the of poor people live in coastal areas, especially in countries that are average Bangladeshi diet.8 Moreover, this sector adds about 2.46% of developing (FAO, 2007).16 Livelihood condition of fishermen is not the total export earning, 4.39% to GDP and 22.76% agrarian sector.9 satisfactory at all because they do not get free access to the water According to Fisheries Statistical Yearbook 2016-17, Bangladesh has body for catching fish in all seasons. Moreover, significant research recorded surplus fish production with an annual output of 41.34 lakh has not yet been conducted on the haor fishermen of north eastern MT against a demand of 40.50 lakh MT in 2016-17.10 Bangladesh is Bangladesh although it has a great ecological, commercial and socio- blessed with huge water bodies in the form of rivers, canal and natural economic importance in the economy of Bangladesh. For proper depressions (haors and beels).11 As far, Bangladesh is surrounded by development, it is essential to improve the livelihood of people of all 230 rivers and estimated total length of rivers, streams and canals categories, especially the vulnerable one- the fishermen community. altogether cover more than 24,000 km.12 Most of the haors and For this improvement, information about fisherman of a particular Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Biom Biostat Int J. 2020;9(1):16‒20. 16 ©2020 Hossain et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. Copyright: Assessing the livelihood status of fishermen at Sunamganj district in Bangladesh ©2020 Hossain et al. 17 region is necessary and vital.17 But there is no sufficient information about livelihood of fishermen community in Bangladesh. However, some studies18–20 on socio-economic conditions of fishermen have been done in Bangladesh but all these efforts lack specific information of livelihood like access to organizations, livelihood vulnerabilities and outcomes. The purpose of this study was to know the livelihood status of fishermen of Bishwambarpur, Derai and Tahirpur upazila at Sunamganj district in Bangladesh and to identify the factors that are affecting the livelihood of the fishermen. Methods In this study a primary dataset was collected based on a semi- structured questionnaire from the fisherman at Sunamganj district. Simple random sampling technique was applied for this study. We interviewed total 425 fishermen randomly. Among them 195 from Tahirpur upazila, 136 from Derai upazila and rest of them are from Bishwambarpur upazila. Descriptive statistical analysis and logistic regression model were applied to analyze the data. We used SPSS program for this study. Results Figure 2 Loan access of the fishermen. Family size is an important socioeconomic indicator as it affects It was also observed that average age of the fishers’ wives were the income, food consumption and socio-economic wellbeing of the 35.65 indicating most of the fishers’ wives were middle age group. households. The family size of the fishers were divided into three The mean age of the fishers’ 1st son was 17.15 i.e. the fishers’ children categories as small (less than 5 members), middle (5 to 7 members) were not adult whereas 13.26, 11.2, 13.02 and 9.64 were the mean and large (more than 7 members). The present study shows that the ages of fishers’ 2nd son, 3rd son ,1st and 2nd daughter respectively. average family member of the fishermen is around 5 and maximum numbers of studied fishermen lived in middle family (64.7%) while Educational qualification influences on individual preferences, only 12.9% fishermen are in large family. It is observed that a large behavioural patterns, performance, skill and capability. In the present number of families are in middle family. This indicates that trends study educational status of the fishermen and their families have been of joint family or large family are continuously decreasing in the grouped into 4 categories such as- (i) Illiterate (ii) Up-to class five fishermen society of Bangladesh which may be due to the poor passed (iii) Up-to SSC (Secondary School Certificate) passed and economic condition and different natural calamities of the fishermen. (iv) Higher than SSC. Many of the fishermen were literate at various To determine the status and the roles of fishermen in their community levels of education. Most of the fishermen were primary educated and to know their behaviour, age structure is an important factor. (48%), while some were in secondary level (20%). About 31% of the The following (figure-1,2) shows that 26.7% fishermen were in age fishermen had no primary education. The following Table -1 shows group 30-40 indicating middle age groups which were the dominant the details educational qualification of the fishermen and their family in fishing due to their physical strength. members: From Table-1, it is also observed that most of the fishermen wives were illiterate. The primary educated were 36.1% while most of them had no education (46%) and only a small portion(15.5%) had education level up to SSC. It was quite evident that most of fishermen were found to send their children to school but still there are a lower percentage of highly educated people found in the selected areas of Sunamganj.