Flood-affected farmers to get 2L quintal wheat seeds free of cost

In a humanitarian move, the Punjab Government has decided to provide 2 lakh quintal wheat seeds free of cost to the farmers who have lost their crop in around 5 lakh acres during the recent floods.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann said the food growers of the state had suffered a whopping loss during the floods, adding that these 2 lakh quintal seeds would be worth Rs 74 crore.

He said the hard working and resilient farmers of the state had played a key role in making the country self-sufficient in food production. Mann said the state government was fully with the farmers in this hour of crisis and no stone would be left unturned to bail them out.

The CM said this was a small effort by the state government to mitigate the woes of the farmers due to the devastation caused by the floods. The destruction caused by these floods was unimaginable and unprecedented as Punjab had never seen such damage before.

He bemoaned that the floods had submerged over 2,300 villages, affected more than 2 million people and destroyed crops across 5 lakh acres of land. Tragically, 56 lives were lost and around 7 lakh people were rendered homeless, adding that 3,200 government schools were damaged, 19 colleges reduced to rubble, 1,400 clinics and hospitals ruined, 8,500 km of roads destroyed and 2,500 bridges collapsed.

As per the initial estimates, the total damage amounted to approximately Rs 13,800 crore though the actual figure could be higher.