PANAJI
Stacked with applications from over 2,500 farmers from across the State seeking compensation for crop damage due to the July rains and flooding, officials of the Agriculture Department are racing against time to process these and meet the Chaturthi deadline for the payouts, which is seemingly unlikely to happen.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had during the monsoon session of the Goa legislative assembly said that the government would compensate farmers whose crops were damaged due to the extreme rainfall in June.
He had also assured the House that the payments would be made to the affected farmers by Ganesh Chaturthi (September 7).
A top officer, meanwhile, told The Goan that thus far over 2,500 claims for compensation have been received across all the zonal agriculture offices (ZAOs).
He said, the process to assess these claims, including field assessments of each application by officials of the respective ZAOs is almost complete but applications from more farmers affected by the excessive rains are continuing to pour in even today.
"Then there are calls our officials get from ministers, MLAs and other political representatives like sarpanchas and panchas that farmers in their areas have not sent in their claims and to entertain those," the official said, adding that these additional claims were hampering the onward procedure which involves getting approvals for the payouts from the Directorate of Accounts.
Assessed applications complete with reports from the ZAO are required to be forwarded to the Directorate of Accounts where they are scrutinised and each claim is either approved or rejected.
"Only then can the compensation be paid out to the beneficiary farmer by the Agriculture Department," the officer said, adding that the first bunch of assessed compensation claims will likely be dispatched to the Accounts Department on Monday (August 26).
The officer said, the crop damage assessed so far is valued at approximately Rs 3.5 crore which the department has set aside the requisite funds to make the payments when approved.
Meanwhile, only those farmers who hold 'Krishi Cards' are eligible for compensation due to crop damage owing to climate related incidents. However, Sawant had said those farmers who are not the owners of the land and therefore cannot make 'krishi cards' will also be taken care of.
In his intervention during the discussion on the damage to crops due to the extreme rainfall phenomenon in July, Sawant had told the House that farmers without 'krishi cards' will also be compensated through the 'CM Relief Fund'.
