Odisha to soon finalize guidelines for package in pest-hit areas

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government today announced that it will soon finalize guidelines for execution of the package announced yesterday for farmers in the pest affected areas at the ground level.

“We will prepare guidelines for its execution and send it to District Collectors. The guidelines for the announced package will be in lines with the one we had issued for the drought package. We will prepare a set of special guidelines for this. The 2015 guidelines will be amended after I discuss it with my departmental officers,” informed Revenue and Disaster Mitigation Minister Maheswar Mohanty.

The Minister’s response came after he was asked by reporters on how the government is going to execute the package in absence of specific guidelines.

Notably, the State government in 2015 had prepared a set of guidelines for implementation of drought package for farmers which came handy this year for implementation of the package announced for farmers in drought-hit areas.

But since crop loss due to drought and pest attack are two different things, the State government has to prepare a different set of guidelines for the package for farmers in pest affected areas as the 2015 guideline won’t serve the purpose.