The Dindigul district administration is planning to construct chain of tanks with supply channels to harvest rain water in a better way.
The chain of tanks would be linked to the existing tanks with supply channels and all the supply channels would be desilted and linked, District Collector M. Vallalar said on Friday.
The administration planned to organise special meetings for the farmers. ‘Less water and cut in production cost’ would be the theme of the meeting. They were planning to install an electronic display board, giving the prices of the vegetables in retail and whole sale markets. There were also plans for a cooperative agriculture marketing centre and a copra producing centre in the district.
Meanwhile, addressing the farmers’ grievances day, Madurai district collector N. Mathivanan, assured that efforts would be taken to declare Madurai district as drought-hit. All the data regarding rainfall and coverage of cultivation would be sent to the government for this purpose, he added.
Joint Director of agriculture K. Periyasamy said the Centre had taken the rainfall data from the department of Meteorology to decide drought situation.
President of the Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal sangam K. Devarajan said 22 districts had been declared ‘drought-hit’ already and works under drought relief programme had been undertaken.
However, majority of the farmers said what mattered was not quantum of rainfall but distribution of rainfall. The district was dry for four months and suddenly there was downpour which was not useful, they said.
The poor storage position in the Vaigai and Periyar dams should be taken into consideration for declaring drought, they said.
Farmers also demanded 10 hours of power supply. As the water level had gone down, we need power for more hours, they added
