Monitoring officer to assess damage to paddy crop today

Chandrakant B Kamble, Principal secretary, Tamil Nadu Transport department, who is the monitoring officer for Ramanathapuram, is visiting the district on Saturday to make on-the-spot assessment of damage to paddy crops due to failure of northeast monsoon.

Collector S. Natarajan, who inspected the withered crops with officials from Agriculture and Revenue departments on Thursday and Friday, said a final assessment would be made after the monitoring officer, deputed by the State government, inspected the crops.

He said paddy was cultivated in more than 1.20 lakh hectares, mostly in rain-fed areas, and almost all crops had withered due to monsoon failure. The district administration had sent a report to the Commissioner of Revenue Administration and a final report would be sent after the monitoring officer’s visit, he said.

As the monsoon never looked promising, about 1.15 lakh farmers, as a precautionary measure, insured their crops under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), covering a total area of 1.16 lakh hectares, he said.

Drinking water issue

As monsoon failure had brought in its wake drinking water problem, the district administration had identified 78 villages, which would face acute drinking water crisis, and launched measures to address the issue.

The district administration was confident of addressing the crisis in majority of the villages by distribution of drinking water under the combined drinking water supply scheme, drawing Cauvery water from Tiruchi. “As of now there is no problem in supplying the Cauvery water,” he said.

In 78 villages, which had no access to Cauvery water, Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board had been asked to supplement drinking water supply by sinking borewells, ring wells and repair existing borewells, he said. Power pumps were being installed to tide over the crisis, he added.