Director Agriculture visits hailstorm-affected areas

Orders immediate assessment of impact

SRINAGAR, SEPTEMBER 14: Director Agriculture Kashmir Syed Altaf Aijaz Andrabi today visited different hailstorm-affected areas of district Budgam and Baramulla which include the villages of Agrikalan, Kanihama, Goomahmedpora, Magam, Ardina, Hanjibugh, Peth Makhama etc.

During the visit, he interacted with the affected farmers and ensured them of every possible technical assistance by the department.  Director Agriculture gave on spot instructions to the concerned field officers to take up the impact assessment assignment seriously and accomplish the entire exercise within three days positively.

Later on, Director Agriculture Kashmir convened an emergency meeting with senior officers of the department to assess the extent of damage caused by yesterday’s strong winds and hailstorm to different crops in several areas of central Kashmir’s Budgam district and north Kashmir’s Baramulla and Kupwara districts.      

Director agriculture directed the Chief Agriculture Officers of concerned districts to depute their teams to these areas to assess the damage caused by the hailstorm yesterday.

Field officers have been asked to conduct a detailed assessment of the losses and the chief Agriculture officers concerned have been asked to furnish crop and area wise damage report within three days.

“Every affected village should be visited, the losses should be documented and a report must be filed within set time,” Andrabi said.

Meanwhile, he directed Joint Director Agriculture extension to personally monitor the entire exercise of assessment of the losses and ensure that all the set norms are being adopted during the assessment procedures.

Joint Director Agriculture Deepak Kuchroo, Avinash Peer Project coordinator Mushrooms, Chief Agriculture Officer Budgam Shabir Ahmad Alaqaband and other concerned officers also accompanied the Director.