Kakinada: There is an acute shortage of agricultural labo-ur in East Godavari, in particular, Konaseema, the very rice bowl of the region, just as the harvesting season for Rabi is upon farmers.
Farmers said that one of the reasons for the shortage of labour is the government’s implementation of the National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (NREGS). “NREGS work is ha-nded out in the morning. Agriculture work has to be done from 9 am to 5 pm. After going for NREGS, the workers are not able to do the agricultural work too,” said Bharatiya Kisan Sangh state general secretary Mutya Sriram Nagendra Prasad (Jameel).
He said that though the machines were brought from Punjab and Haryana, they were not sufficient and not suitable for harvesting as they would ruin pulses.
Another reason is that the number of youth in the villages has been progressively reducing year by year with more and more of them preferring to educate themselves than work as daily wage labourers.
“The youth used to earlier do agricultural work and also go to school and college. After late chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy introduced the Fees Reimbursement Scheme, they are preferring to go in for engineering and other higher education while the elders are going to the cities to be a part of urbanisation programmes.
All these factors have hit agricultural work,” said Nekkanti Srinivas, a farmer from West Godavari. He said that the government should pay attention to mechanisation in agricultural fields and link NREGS to agriculture to reduce the cost of production of crops.
Also, the machines, currently available in Konas-eema, were not adequate.
The farmers, who now have to pay Rs 400 to Rs 500 per day per worker, are trying to bring agricultural workers from the north Andhra districts of Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram and several parts of East Godavari, such as Kota-nanduru, Tuni and Rowthulapudi to Konaseema.
