Farmers complain about non-availability of harvesters

RAMANATHAPURAM

After a group of farmers from Paramakudi and surrounding villages complained that some of the officials attached to the Agriculture Engineering Department in Ramanathapuram district allegedly failed to provide harvester machines, Collector Shankar Lal Kumawat pulled up the erring officials here on Wednesday.

The monthly farmers’ grievance day meeting was held at the Collectorate.

During the meeting, when Nagappan from Paramakudi rose up and blamed the officials in the AED wing for not giving the harvesters to them on time, the Collector asked the official concerned to respond. Not satisfied with the answer, the Collector told the officials to support and cooperate with the farmers in future.

When the farmers claimed that despite making payments towards rental charges, the officials failed to give the machines, the Collector said that it would be rectified in the next season. He also appealed to the farmers to bring it to his knowledge about such issues in advance. Following this, the farmers expressed satisfaction.

With the summer season started, the officials said that out of 1,763 tanks in the district, 156 among them already turned bone-dry, while 662 tanks had 25 to 50 % of water stored, 291 tanks had 50-90 % storage and 654 tanks had less than 25 %. The Collector appealed to the farmers to judiciously use water for irrigation till the rainy season came in.

The officials further said that the district had recorded only 47.09 mm rainfall so far and that it was 45.36 mm lesser than the normal average rainfall.

They also shared that the e-NAM trading of produce grown by the farmers had facilitated in carrying out 759 transactions. Farmers who raised chilly, cotton, paddy and groundnut used the facility and over 25,000 quintals of all kinds of produce was sold through e-NAM. The value of the goods was around ₹ 8 crore and a little over ₹ 1 crore was directly credited to the farmers’ bank account.