BICHOLIM: Some years ago about 50 residents in the mining-hit area came together and decided to turn to farming after they lost their jobs, but this year’s rain has washed away their entire crop making them hopeless.
This is the story of the residents from Maina Navelim in Sanquelim whose agriculture crops were washed away because of floods. The farmers claim they had seen this type of flood some 20-25 years back and now have turned to the government for some help.
“After we lost our jobs from mining we tried to seek some other option and since we had piece of land we thought of cultivating it. Even the mining company helped us in this endeavour and for the first time after several years these barren fields were cultivated,” Vishwambar Gawas, who was in the forefront in this field, told Herald.
Herald had earlier highlighted this story of the farmers from Navelim who had also asked other mining dependents to turn to farming. Today, these farmers take different crops year around and are satisfied with their earning. But at present the floods have caused havoc in the area.
“Throughout the year we are producing crops in these fields including rice during rainy season and chillies, brinjal, chawli, alsande and other such crops during other seasons. This year all the paddy fields have been damaged due to floods” Gawas said.
Gawas is not the only one who has his fields destroyed by floods. Sundar Naik, who was employed in mining was also retrenched and the company was paying only 50% salary to him. As he was unemployed he decided to get back to farming.
“The mining company claims to pay 50% salary but we have not received anything since last several months. After mortgaging gold ornaments of my wife I cultivated the farm and also employed some labourers in the field but with this rain everything has been washed away,” another farmer, Sundar Naik claims saying how he runs the affairs of his house with very little monetary source.
Digambar Naik claims that this year most of the farmers had cultivated Jyoti variety of paddy crop which got totally destroyed. “This year many of the farmers had cultivated Jyoti variety which is delicate while very few had gone for Jaya variant of crop. Even after the water recedes the crop will be damaged due to the sludge in the fields. We have no hopes left. The government officials and the mining representatives have already visited the site but even if some meagre compensation that we might receive will not equal the losses we have incurred,” Digambar claimed.
