Vijayawada: Congress demands relief to lockdown-hit farmers

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) expressed concern over the lockdown clamped to check spread of Coronavirus becoming a curse to the farmer who could not harvest the Rabi crop due to the shortage of labourers.

Dr Sake Sailajanath, president of APCC, said in a statement here on Friday that the farmers could not sell even the kharif paddy stock to repay the loans. "Due to the lockdown there is no transport to take the produce to the market and could not get even the minimum support price," he said.

Referring to the woes of horticulture farmers, he said that they were incurring heavy loss since they could not harvest mango, papaya, pomegranate, sapota and banana and moreover there were no buyers of these varieties. Likewise, the chilli, maize and turmeric farmers are also suffering heavy loss.

The PCC chief appealed to the government to make available the paddy harvesting machines to the farmers and the government should go to the farmers to purchase paddy instead of telling them to bring to the paddy purchasing centres since they could not bring the produce to the market due to lockdown.

The government should purchase horticulture produce from farmers and pay compensation for the crop loss. "The farmers should be allowed to transport their produce to the markets," he demanded.

The aqua and poultry farmers also suffered heavy loss due to lockdown and they should also be given a helping hand. Dr Sailajanath said that the untimely rains damaged the all types of crops and it is high time the government came to the rescue of the farmers.