Farmers to get natural disaster, crop ruin insurance - AAIB
The Agriculture and Agrarian Insurance Board (AAIB) will introduce new technology to assess compensation to be paid to farmers after a natural disaster or when wild elephants destroy crops, a senior official of the AAIB said.
Director General of the AAIB, Panduka Weerasinghe said a fully automated data base ‘Index Based Insurance’ linking all districts, farmers, paddy fields and lands where five other crops have been cultivated will calculate the amount of compensation that should be paid to farmers.
“Under this new system, we will assess the water, sun shine, wind and temperature, the main natural elements that determine the harvest of Paddy, Maize, Soya, Chilies, Big Onion and Potatoes for compensation in a post disaster claim. If it is a crop or property destruction by an Elephant, the victim must give a call using his mobile phone from the location where destruction took place to the data base at AAIB that enables to assess the destruction with the help of satellite images,” Mr. Weerasinghe noted.
He said with the introduction of new technology, farmers could obtain full compensation for their crop failure or destruction from natural disasters like floods or droughts and prevent bogus claims.
Mr. Weerasinghe said the about 8 million farmers who cultivate Paddy, Maize, Chilies, Big Onion, Potatoes and Soya have been insured for crop insurance and the government pays compensation up to Rs.100,000 for a hectare or Rs. 40,000 for an acre as compensation.
“Under the previous regime, Rs. 10,000 for an acre or Rs. 25,000 for a hectare was paid as compensation and charged Rs. 450 as premium for an acre from farmers. But the unity government does not charge a single rupee from farmers as premium effective from this march. The government has already paid Rs. 5,200 million for crop failure to farmer as compensation as a result of drought and floods experienced in the last couple of years, Mr. Weerasinghe said.
Mr. Weerasinghe noted that the government collected Rs. 3 for every kg of fertilizer sold as premium for crop insurance with the presumption that a farmer normally purchases 150 kg of fertilizer there by paying Rs. 450 as premium for Rs. 10,000 compensation per acre.
“But we have no opportunity now to charge a premium from farmers as the Agriculture Ministry now gives money to farmers to purchase fertilizer. After a long review of the system, President Maithripala Sirisena instructed us not to charge even a rupee to pay insurance benefits for crop failure and as such we now pay Rs.100,000 with no premium paid at all by farmers, Mr. Weerasinghe said.