Paddy residue burning: Agriculture Dept staff allege vendetta

Manmeet Singh Gill

Amritsar, October 31

While the burning of crop residue in paddy fields is already a burning issue, the employees of the agriculture department are up in arms against the state government for taking selective action against them and putting the blame of the violations solely on them.

The government had recently suspended four agriculture officers, including a chief agriculture officer and three agriculture officers for their alleged failure to check farm fires.

Staging a protest outside the Kheti Bhawan here under the banner of Agriculture Technocrats Action Committee on Monday, the employees alleged that the government seems to be looking for scapegoats to hide its own failure in managing the farm fires.

They stated that the agriculture department was entrusted with the creation of awareness among the farmers, a job on which every department employee was working for the last three months.

“If the crop residue was burnt, it was burnt by the farmers and the agriculture department employees did not have any power to stop it,” said an employee. They stated that one of the four suspended employees was specially honoured for his services by Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Speaker, Punjab Assembly just two days ago before he was suspended.

While demanding the immediate reinstatement of suspended employees, Agriculture Technocrats Action Committee general secretary Sukhbir Singh Sandhu said that as per the action plan prepared by the state government, 11 different departments were entrusted with different duties for checking the burning of crop residue.

He added that as per the duty assigned, the agriculture department employees were entrusted with the task of in-situ crop residue management through holding information, education and communication activities and promoting schemes for reducing generation of crop residue. “All the employees have been working to create awareness among the farmers for the past three months,” he said.

Sandhu said that the state government seems to have found easy scapegoats in the agriculture officers and suspended them. The employee leaders stated that punishing innocent employees for no fault of theirs is unjustified and the other employees are standing united with the suspended employees.

Up in arms

• Employees of the Agriculture Department are up in arms against the state government for taking selective action against them and putting the onus of the violations solely on them
• The government has recently suspended four agriculture officers, including a chief agriculture officer and three agriculture officers, for their alleged failure to check farm fires