look news india
Jalandhar: Farmers will no longer be able to get accurate weather forecast information as the Agriculture Ministry of the Central Government has closed 199 agricultural science centers across the country from Thursday. These include eight centers in Punjab, including KVKs located in Jalandhar's Nurmahal, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Patiala, Gurdaspur, Ferozepur, Patiala, Moga, although these were earlier closed from March 31. This information was given by issuing a letter. Now a new order was issued on Wednesday to close from next Thursday, February 29. In such a situation, farmers will now have to check weather forecast information from the website of India Meteorological Department (IMD). Although IMD also plans to send messages to farmers' mobile numbers to directly coordinate with their numbers, data collection remains a challenge. The main reason for this is that data of farmers is being sought from the employees working at the centers but their services have been terminated with immediate effect, hence they are also refusing to provide the data.
KVK used to give alerts to farmers on SMS and WhatsApp group.
The Krishi Vigyan Kendra was in touch with the deployed farmers to provide information about the weather and organized sessions to inform them about the changes in the weather. Along with this, weather forecast information was also shared with them from time to time so that all arrangements from timely maintenance of crops to their harvesting, spraying of medicines, storage etc. could be ensured. Every Tuesday and Friday, the centers provided information about the weather for the next five days, which included information about rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, clouds etc. Along with this, information about sudden disasters like cyclone, strong storm with heavy rain, hailstorm, lightning etc. was also given 48 to 72 hours in advance. About 16 employees of 8 centers became unemployed.
Two employees were deployed at each center
It is noteworthy that in each KVK, two employees were deployed under Agricultural Meteorology, which included Subject Matter Specialist (SMS) and Observer. Out of these, about 16 employees were serving in 8 Krishi Vigyan Kendras of Punjab who have now become unemployed. These include BCA, BSc Agriculture and PhD Agromet Metrology qualifications, whose age is between 34 years to 42 years, it has become difficult for them to get further employment. Dr. retired from the post of SMS in KVK Noormahal. Baljeet Kaur says that these posts were started by the Union Agriculture Ministry in 2018. He was posted here in 2019 and his tenure was till 2026, but the Union Agriculture Ministry has suddenly removed him from the post and made him unemployed. In this regard, he had written a letter to the Union Agriculture Ministry at his own level and through Punjab Agricultural University, but no response was received.