TS begins damage assessment
The heavy rains brought cheers and pain to people including farmers others across. With rains on the wane, the government has begun assessing the damage to crops, roads, breaches to tanks, property and across the state.
Agriculture minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy said that it would take two or three days to assess the actual damage caused to the crops.
“District-wise teams have been constituted to assess the damage to crops. A preliminary estimate of damage or otherwise will be known only after two or three days when water recedes from fields,” he said.
Sowing has been completed in 37.06 lakh hectares in the state as against the normal area of 43.43 lakh ha, which accounts for 78 per cent of the normal area as on date.
Paddy is in transplanting stage, jowar, bajra, red gram, sesamum, onion, turmeric, groundnut and chillies at vegetative stage, maize at knee-deep height, green gram and black gram in flowering to harvesting stage, castor, cotton and soya bean crops at vegetative to flowering stage.
Agriculture secretary C. Parthasarathy told DC: “The extent of damage depends on the number of days the crops are submerged. If submergence period is less, crops are saved. An assessment could be made in two or three days. We are not giving any official figures since any such assessment will be wrong at this juncture.”
He added, “Rains are a big relief to farmers. There will be sufficient water for ensuing rabi.”
In rain-hit Medak district, about 50,000 hectares is reportedly hit.
District collector Ronald Ross, who visited some of the affected villages, told farmers that all those who lost their crops, including horticulture crops, would get compensation.
Teams of officials belonging to Revenue and Agriculture department have already spread out across the district to assess the damage. Due to release of waters from Singur after a long time, many fields downstream were inundated.
Reports say 247 houses were fully damaged and 9,600 partially.
The collector visited some of the rain-hit villages.
Farmers having fields on the banks of Manjeera in Sadashivpet mandal met MLA Chinta Prabhakar and sought compensation for the damage caused to cotton, maize, pulses and other crops.
“We will provide compensation to the affected farmers,” Mr Prabhakar said.
In Nizamabad district, reports indicated that crops in 20,000 hectares including soya bean, paddy and others were damaged.
There are reports to damage to cotton crop in about 5,192 hectares in Warangal district.