Flood fury: Rebuilding life huge task for Ferozepur border farmers

Anirudh Gupta

Ferozepur, September 11

Already grappling with the poor financial conditions, hundreds of border farmers are facing a huge task of rebuilding their homes, paying debts and restoring their agricultural land, following floods, dashing their hopes of having a bumper paddy crop.

Though the impact of the floodwaters entering villages along the Sutlej is yet to be ascertained, paddy crop on over 20,000 acres as well as property worth lakhs have fallen victim to the raging floods.

Among several other affected villages, inhabitants of Dona Mattar-Ghazniwala village, situated along the border, have been severely hit as hundreds of houses have been damaged.

In absence of any permanent bridge, they have to transport their agricultural equipment through makeshift “beras”. However, during the monsoon, the rising river waters pose a risk to any navigation.

Karan Singh Dhaliwal, secretary, Border Kisan Union (Punjab), said that farmers of DT Mall enclave, who have land across the fence, have incurred huge damage due to these floods. In addition to this, around 40 tractor-trailers, one JCB machine and a harvesting machine has also been damaged. “The wooden “bera” which was built by these farmers by spending around Rs 6-7 lakh for transportation of their agricultural instruments also got washed away,” he said.

Joginder Singh of Bhaba Haji village in DT Mall area said that around 15 tractors which they had parked near their fields across the fencing had been damaged. “Now, we have no money to even repair these,” he said.

Malkeet Singh, a resident of Kaluwala village, said that his house and the entire crop had been damaged. “For the last two months we have been running from pillar to post, but we have not received a single penny of compensation. I don’t know how we will manage,” said Malkeet.

Gurmit Singh, president, Bharti Kisan Union Ekta (Sidhupur), said that farmers had not even received the previous compensations. “Tomorrow a delegation of our union members will meet Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann regarding this,” he added.

The scale of the disaster is evident from the fact that crops on 2,000 acres in Dona Mattar, 300 acres in Raja Rai, 300 acres in Gatti Mattar and 100 acres in Chak Shikargah have been destroyed.