PANAJI
Uday Prabhudesai, a farmer from Pernem kicked up a stir on Saturday morning when he sat on a dharna at the Agriculture Department's entrance at Tonca-Caranzalem ostensibly to protest against what he called was the mismanagement of paddy harvesting operations in the northernmost taluka.
Calling the ongoing harvesting of paddy in Pernem a "mess" and "mismanagement" by the department Deshprabhu said through his dharna he is seeking to draw attention of the authorities to the challenges faced by the farming community.
But Deshprabhu's dharna fizzled out later in the day when it was revealed that he himself had been allotted the contract as a 'service provider' to carry out the harvesting operations but ran into trouble when the person he had hired got into a dispute and withdrew the services.
An official of the Agriculture department said Deshprabhu himself is to be blamed for the harvest-related problems of the paddy farmers in Pernem as he was allotted the contract as 'service provider' for mechanical harvesting operations in the taluka.
The official said Deshprabhu sub-delegated the job to one Candido from Taleigao who deployed 70 machines from Karnataka but withdrew them following a dispute between the two.
Therefore, the work of harvesting paddy has been hampered due to the dispute between Deshprabhu and his service provider, the official said.
Paddy farmers in Pernem and across the State are already reeling under the prospects of heavy losses after the heavy unseasonal rains post the withdrawal of monsoon had delayed harvesting and damaged ready-to-harvest crop.
