Pulwama: Paddy farmers in Pulwama district are in distress as water scarcity has hit them badly, even though there was no advisory by the authorities for the farmers of the district.
“There is no hope,” gloomy Irshad Ahmad, a farmer, at his fields in Kakpora said.
He believes that crops will fail for streams have gone dry and ther is no rainfall in sight.
While most of his paddy fields have gone dry, he is unable to get to terms that his crop on sprawling 15 kanals will perish.
“I have planted paddy but I have no idea what to do if dry spell continues the crop will perish in a month,” he confided.
According to farmers there are almost 6000 kanals of paddy fields in the area but they are running short of water. “Streams are dry”.
The farmers are fuming in anger, who blame the department of Agriculture should have warned them earlier as were their counterparts in north Kashmir.
“They didn’t issue an advisory for us,” aggrieved farmers said.
They say that flood and irrigation department had issued an advisory to farmers in North Kashmir and Ganderbal as well to not cultivate paddy this year.
Authoirities had claimed that water scarcity will hit badly due to less snowfall in winter and subsequently they had warned farmers in north Kashmir, Ganderbal in central Kashmir to not put themselves in efforts to cultivate the paddy .
“We demand that authorities should come to help us during water crises and in dry spell,” they said.
However Assistant executive engineer irrigation department kakapora Mohd Yousuf said that there is an abundance of water in streams.
“We have not issued any advisory for farmers in pulwama as water level in streams is satisfactory. Recent rainfall has increased water level in various streams,” yousuf said.
(Pic used for representational purposes only)
