The Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries has now started awarding compensation for crop damage caused by the severe drought in the 2023 yala season.
Accordingly, the Agriculture and Agrarian Insurance Board states that the amount spent for crop damage compensation is 550 million rupees.
The Agriculture and Agrarian Insurance Board says that all the money required for crop damage compensation in the Walawa zone and Hambantota district has been allocated and by the end of this month, the compensation money will be awarded to all the farmers in the country who had crop damage.
According to the estimates made regarding crop damage in the yala season, about 65,000 acres were damaged due to the drought and 11,000 acres were damaged due to the floods caused by the rains that followed.
Many fertile paddy lands in the Walawa zone where crops were damaged due to drought were destroyed due to lack of water. Especially if the required water from Samanala Wewa was given to Chandrika Weva at the required time, it would have been possible to save many acres of paddy fields in the Valawa zone, but due to the delay of two weeks in providing water, the farmers of the Valawa zone suffered a lot of crop damage.
An opportunity to award compensation to the farmers of the Walawa region happened recently (04) in Agunakolapalasse.
200 farmers of the Walava zone were awarded compensation.
The Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industry, Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera, who expressed his opinion, said that this is the first time that compensation money has been given to farmers within a minimum period of time.
Generally, it takes about a year to provide crop damage compensation. If crops are damaged this year, compensation will be received next year. But the Honorable President Ranil Wickramasinghe, as the Minister of Finance, gave all his support to the proposal that I put forward that compensation should be provided urgently for the crop damage that occurred in the last yala season.
He gave us the necessary financial provisions to pay these compensations without delay. We know that the economic situation in the country was not good last year. But this time we have already paid 550 million rupees as crop damage compensation. Also, before the end of this year, the Agriculture and Farmers Insurance Board informed me that they will take steps to compensate all the farmers who suffered crop damage. The Treasury has agreed to provide the necessary financial allocations for that.
Therefore, the minister also mentioned that steps will be taken to provide the highest amount of compensation paid so far for crop damage in history.
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