Admn adopts carrot & stick approach to stop farm fires

Patiala, November 18

The district authorities are following a carrot and stick policy to prevent stubble burning. While the police are cracking a whip on farmers found putting crop residue on fire, teams of the district administration are visiting fields and persuading farmers against burning stubble.

District officials claimed that the counselling had worked as the cases of stubble burning had significantly reduced in the past few days. Farmers have also shown their willingness to cooperate with the administration and contribute towards environmental conservation.

Deputy Commissioner Sakshi Sawhney, along with teams from the district administration and the Patiala police, held a meeting via video conference to assess the cases of stubble burning.

During the meeting, ADC Anuprita Johal said discussions were held with farmers and they were encouraged to explore technological solutions to manage stubble in their fields or to use ex situ management methods with the help of balers, instead of resorting to burning the crop residue.

Patiala SDM Ishmat Vijay Singh, Samana SDM Samana Charanjit Singh, Patran SDM Navdeep Kumar, Dudhan Sadhan SDM Kirpalveer Singh and Rajpura SDM Jasleen Kaur Bhullar, along with tehsildars and naib tehsildars, visited fields and villages and interacted with farmers over the burning issue.

Officials appealed to farmers to avail themselves of benefits of the WhatsApp chatbot at number 7380016070 to receive complete assistance.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre today stated that farm fire incidents were reported from 10 locations in the district.