Mangaluru: As the Dakshina Kannada district is experiencing a drought-like situation with no sufficient water to drink as well due to no rainfall this year, the farmers here have urged the government to declare the whole DK district as drought-hit district.
The leaders of the farmers placed this demand in front of Dakshina Kannada District In-charge Minister U T Khader while he was chairing a progress review meeting of agriculture, horticulture and cooperative departments at the Deputy Commissioner’s office on Wednesday, June 19. Farmers lamented that most of them had not watered their arecanut, coconut and banana plantations as almost all the water sources had dried up even before the month of March. Citing that there would no proper yield during the next year, they urged the minister that the entire district be declared as drought-hit.
Meanwhile, some leaders alleged that both agriculture and horticulture departments had failed to spread the information regarding the various government facilities which, they said, had deprived the farmers of the various benefits. The agricultural equipment is just being dumped in the Raitha Samparka Kendra (RSK) and no farmer is able to avail their benefits due to lack of knowledge, they added.
Responding to it, Minister U T Khader asked the officials of both agriculture and horticulture departments to create awareness about the various government schemes and help farmers avail their benefits. Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner Sasikanth Senthil informed that he would start a ‘call centre’ at the district level, meant for farmers to educate them about the various programmes of the government.
The delay in releasing compensation for the arecanut fruit rot disease was also raised in the meeting. When several farmers complained about delay in receiving compensation, Deputy Commissioner Sasikanth Senthil replied that among the total of 56,000 applications submitted, 50,000 have been given the compensation under fruit rot disease. “There may be some specific reasons for not releasing compensation to some of the applicants”, he said.
