70,000 farmers in Barmer awaits relief for 2017

BARMER: After the monsoon failure in 2018, the state government has declared Barmer district as drought-hit. The officials have been directed to prepare a list of the farmers whose crops got damaged due to the drought, so that they could be compensated for the crop loss.

However, the apathy of the officials is such that about 70,000 farmers in Barmer are yet to get compensation against their crop loss in 2017.

It was revealed during a meeting of the revenue officials, chaired by revenue minister Harish Choudhary.

The officials informed the minister about the crop assessment report and drought situation on the ground. They said they have submitted the plan for the relief activities to the state government.

During the discussion, Choudhary told the officials that he had got complaints that the droughtaffected farmers of 2017 were yet to get the compensation and sought reply.

Replying to the minister’s query, Barmer’s additional district collector Rakesh Kumar informed him that they had received a compensation money of Rs 292 crore for 2017-18, of which Rs 227 crore was disbursed among the farmer, but for “some reasons” remaining Rs 65 crore could not be released to the farmers.

When HT talked to Rakesh Kumar about the delay in compensation to the farmers, he said since 2017-18 the state government has changed the pattern of budgeted allotment and accordi ng t o t he new pattern, t he department needs to submit the list of affected farmers to the state relief department, followi ng which t he department releases the budget. “For some areas, the list (of affected farmers) could not be prepared on time,” he said. Owing to this, the officials could not send the complete list to the relief department.

“Apart from this, many farmers have not shared required details like proper bank account, bank name and IFSC code, and Aaadhaar details, due to which their details could not be sent to relief department,” said the additional district collector.

He said that revenue officials have been directed to complete the list with all the required details on priority basis. “The work is about to complete and soon we will disburse compensation to the farmers,” he said.

According to the relief department data, during 2017-18, about 1,717 villages of total 2,756 villages in the district were declared drought-affected. The government announced compensation worth Rs 292 crore for about 3.3 lakh farmers. While the department has disbursed Rs 227 crore among 2.6 lakhs farmers, about 70,000 farmers are yet to get the relief.