The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Need for cold storage facility at Tiruchi airport

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Need for cold storage facility at Tiruchi airport

Staff Reporter

It will be of help to farmers to export their produce

KARUR: The working president of the Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association Mahadanapuram V. Rajaram has urged the Central and State governments to take urgent steps to establish a cold storage facility at the Tiruchi airport.

If established such a facility would be of great help to farmers, who wish to export vegetables, fruits and flowers to the west Asian countries from Tiruchi.

At present the farmers and exporters have to depend on the passenger flights for agri exports and the authorities insist that the export items could be loaded only depending on the passenger count. In case the particular flight has a better complement of passengers, then the export consignment has to wait for the next opportunity.

But for that the highly perishable consignment of agri products should have a cold storage facility at the airport and that is where the support of the governments was essential, Mr. Rajaram has noted.

Already there was a move to establish a cold storage facility at the airport and the land was identified for the project. But that was later dropped and no concerted effort has since been made to establish such a facility there, he said.

The absence of such a facility was coming in the way of meeting the contractual obligations of farmers who had entered into agreement with foreign firms for export of items from the region.

He has also demanded that the Central Government should take steps to operate separate freight flight out of Tiruchi to rev up the farming and textile industry in the region.

That would help various categories of entrepreneurs in the neighbouring districts.

Agri business centres

Mr. Rajaram has also pointed out that the State Government has announced the formation of agri business centres with all facilities all under one roof for marketing farm products in Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore at a cost of Rs.200 crore.

Tiruchi has missed the bus and the farmers in the region were disappointed at that. The State Government should take note of the farmers’ sentiments and add Tiruchi to the list allotting enough funds to establish a similar agri business centre, he has said.

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