Staff crunch hits soil health card project in Ambala

Nitish Sharma

Tribune News Service

Ambala, December 8

Shortage of staff in the Agriculture Department has affected the Central scheme of providing soil health cards to farmers in time. Officials say the shortage of staff coupled with revised schedule to complete the task has made the things difficult for the department.

Ambala has 1.17 lakh hectare of cultivable land and the department has a target of collecting 39,781 samples till March 31, 2017. But the department has managed to collect nearly 30,000 samples so far even after engaging officials of other branches of the department.

Providing soil health cards to all farmers of the country is an ambitious project of the Central government to improve agriculture production.

The samples are being taken through GPS as the exact location, latitude, longitude, khasra numbers etc will also be mentioned in the cards. The samples will be tested and cards will be prepared accordingly.

An official said the department was already struggling with shortage of staff and then the same staff had to be engaged in crop-cutting assessment, which was a time-bound programme.

The task of health card was to be completed in three years, but the schedule was changed to two years and now, they had to cover the entire district by March 31 next year, said the official. Shortage of GPS equipment and limited number of days left to collect samples were other issues that the officials were facing as the samples could be taken only from empty fields, he said.

Deputy Director, Agriculture, SS Yadav said: “The issue of GPS is manageable, but lack of staff has been creating some trouble. The department has been trying to achieve the target by utilising the given resources and we are hopeful that the target will be achieved within time. Samples of Saha, Naraingarh and Ambala-II have been collected while the samples of Ambala-I are being collected. In case some area remains left out, it will be covered by April.”