Mansa (Punjab)| In an initiative aimed at protecting the interest of farmers, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Saturday announced that farmers would be compensated before the assessment of the damage caused by any future natural calamity is completed. Addressing a function organized here to distribute compensation to farmers who lost their crops due to a pink worm attack, the Chief Minister said that it is unfortunate that food producers get compensation after a long and cumbersome process of assessment of crop loss.
He said this will be reversed and now farmers will get compensation before evaluation, as is already being done in Delhi.
Mann said it would be helpful in preventing undue harassment of farmers to get compensation after a cumbersome process.
The Chief Minister said that the cotton crop of the farmers in the Malwa belt was not due to the attack of white and pink insects, but because of the supply of poor quality seeds and pesticides, which was mainly responsible for this huge loss.
He announced a thorough investigation in this regard and said that strict action would be taken against those supplying these spurious seeds and pesticides to the farmers.
Mann categorically stated that the real culprit was the then government, which supplied bad seeds and pesticides to the farmers.
He said that if the then government had performed its duty well and ensured the supply of good seeds and pesticides, the farmers would not have faced such difficulties. He said that after such a huge loss, a meager compensation sprinkles salt on the wounds of the farmers.
Mann said successive governments have turned the country’s food producers into beggars, who have to face a lot of exploitation to get compensation for their losses.
