Karkala; Jan 08: The annoyed Coco farmers staged a protest against the poor quality supply of organic fertilizer by the horticulture department, which they are supposed to receive on subsidy. An incident of getting angry over Vishwanatha, deputy director of the horticulture department was reported in Ajekar.Besides, the fertilizer, which they brought for the distribution, has been rejected by the farmers.
It is said that horticulture department has recommended Marne village for Coco cultivation under Guccha village programe in last year.Accordingly, coco grower famers in Ajekar formed one sangha and planted coco saplings provided by the horticulture department. The fertilizer required for the planted coco plants, farmers only used to buy from the authorized dealers, the money which was paid by the farmers, were being re-imbursed by horticulture department. But horticulture deputy director Vishwanatha by flouting the government order, he himself directly source the poor quality neem leaves organic fertilizer from Challakere Charminar bio-tech company and deceived the farmers by supplying the poor quality fertilizer and joined his hands with the company, farmers alleged strongly.
As per the terms of the horticultural department, farmers will not receive either fertilizer or any kind of other instruments, instead farmers only after buying from the authorized dealers and then department will give money in the form of subsidy. But for Ajekar’s Vishnu Coco growers Sangha, there was a system of distributing organic fertilizer under the control of Vishwanatha.But farmers, when they did come to know the quality of the fertilizer and variation in weight, they had a doubt. When the fertilizer was examined, in that neem fodder fertilizer and stone-soil were discovered.Besides, by adding water, farmers were being cheated. In order to ascertain the weight in fertilizer bag of 50kg, it was observed that there was a big cheating and almost all the bags were weighing 45kgs each instead of 50kgs.Enraged farmers demanded an immediate action against the officer, who supplies poor quality fertilizer and was deceiving the farmers all these days.
With regard to the quality of the fertilizer, laboratory test will be conducted in private laboratory and cheating in weight will also cannot be tolerated by the farmers. Farmers demanded an immediate action against the erring officials or failing which, an intensive protest will be organized against assistant director Vishwanatha, farmers warned.
