TURA/ AMPATI: Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Monday held review meetings in West and South West Garo Hills in view of the emerging drought-like situation in the region and has issued necessary instruction to tackle the situation.
Sangma held the review meetings at both Ampati and Tura with all line departments including the Agriculture department and allied sectors.
In Tura, the Chief Minister directed the heads of districts to converge and form a committee to chalk out short- and long- term contingency plans.
While deliberating on the need for contingency plans to be linked with sustainability, he asserted that viable drought sturdy crops should be introduced to farmers so as to lessen the impact of massive crop failure that has hit the State.
“Farmers should be introduced to nitrogen fixing crops like soya to counter aridity,” the Chief Minister said while seeking recommendations from representatives from ICAR.
Emphasizing on the need to preserve water catchment areas, he told the line departments to identify barren areas and initiate green cover restoration by planting feasible vegetation that can be harvested to generate livelihood.
Earlier at Ampati, the Chief Minister asked the departments to have a buy-back system to help and support the farmers to take up alternative farming. Sangma also directed the departments to identify those areas where interventions are to be taken up and assured that the government would immediately release some funds as corpus.
Urging the district administration to call meetings with farmers and all stakeholders and disseminate information on government interventions, he highlighted the need to impress upon the people to go for alternative farming, identify crops that are capable of recharging catchment areas and the need for every village to have community nurseries.
Sangma also called upon all the line departments to work on a convergence mode, to respond to the needs of the people and the farmers in particular and ensure that their efforts are visible.
Talking to the media at Tura, Sangma said instruction has been issued to the Chief Secretary to review the situation and design a road map to help the affected families in the State.
“We will ensure that efforts are made to provide interim relief to the affected families in the entire State. The department has given us details of the affected villages and we have issued instructions to get details on households, who have been affected,” said Sangma.
When asked whether the government will take up the matter with the Centre, he said, “We will definitely take up the matter and brief the Centre about the prevailing situation and seek interim relief.”
On government efforts to deal with the situation, he said, “We will work out modalities to offer interim relief to the affected families by providing them alternatives from line departments like veterinary, and look at possibility for plantation of crops like cotton, soya, maize, mustard etc”.
He also told that the entire State has been affected by inconsistent rainfall this year.
“There have been many other contributing factors, including climate change which has affected the situation,” he said, while adding that he has asked the department to find out ways and measure to help the farmers.
A total of 315 villages have been affected in Betasing and Zikzak blocks in South West Garo Hills while in West Garo Hills, the agriculture department has so far indicated that over 250 villages have been affected.
