THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though roof-top vegetable farming has been touted as the pet project of the ruling front, the subsidies given for it through the Kerala Irrigation Infrastructural Development Corporation (KIIDC) has stopped for the past five months. Earlier, massive subsidies were given to complete roof- top farming set-up which included a biogas plant, grow bags and sprinklers.
Last year, the scheme had covered over 1,500 beneficiaries in Thiruvananthapuram alone and several government employees took up roof-top vegetable farming. A low-end biogas plant which can daily process 2 kg of waste into manure and fuel now cost Rs 18,500 after central subsidies. Grow bags and sprinkler cost another Rs 10,000. Until before elections, all these used to come for a total of around '10,000 making use of subsidies rolled out through KIIDC. Now the roof-top farming has become more expensive.
“My neighbour, a secretariat employee, cultivates brinjal, ladies finger, chillies etc with roof-top farming. After seeing their success, I went to buy a high-end water jacket biogas plant along with grow bags. I was told subsidies are no more available and I am waiting for it to be resumed,” said N. Jalaja of Paruthikuzhy. The officials of KIIDC said that they had stopped giving subsidies as an administrative sanction had not come in this regard. “The scheme found a place in the recent state budget also but no sanction has been given to resume it, may be due to paucity of funds. I hope the problem will be solved soon as we have had over 10,000 beneficiaries in the state for the scheme,” an official said.
