February 18: The government has released Rs 1 billion to provide relief to the farmers who incurred loss and damage of paddy plantation due to unseasonal rainfall.    

According to the state-owned RSS, the Home Minstry has decided to compensate the farmers for the loss as per the recommendation of the District Disaster Management Committee.    

The relief amount is to be provided to the farmers as per the latest guidelines of the government.

According to the details made public by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, a total of 325,258 metric tons of paddy worth Rs 8.268 billion have been damaged by the unseasonal rainfall in October.

The ministry added that the production of paddy also declined this year due to the natural disaster.

Presenting a report in January, the ministry had said that the production of paddy had declined in the country by 8.74 percent due to the damage caused by the unseasonal rainfall across the country from October 17 to 20.

As per the data collected by the ministry from across the country, the production of paddy in the current fiscal year has been found to be the lowest in the last five years. 

The government had earlier decided to provide up to 65 per cent subsidy to paddy farmers for the loss they incurred from the floods.

A meeting of the Council of Ministers held on October 28 took a decision to dole out subsidy to the farmers by classifying them into small, medium and large groups based on the area of farming

In November, the government had approved the work procedure submitted by a taskforce recommending relief to the farmers for the damage sustained to their crop by the unseasonal rainfall.