Kadapa: The progress of YSR free agricultural crop insurance scheme is slow in the district as farmers have to directly do the fingerprint for their registration and there are system problems too.
Every year, most crops are damaged by climate imbalance and farmers facing severe losses. Crop insurance can support farmers in such situations. The state government launched the scheme last year. However, at the field level, officials are seeking the fingerprints of the growers to link them to the relevant website through the internet. Hence, the delay.
The state government has allowed the district to implement the scheme for 13 types of agricultural and horticultural crops during the kharif season last year. Agricultural extension officers, village agricultural and horticultural assistants and multi-purpose extension officers working at the Rythu Bharosa Kendram (RBK) have already registered their e-crop and got themselves connected to the Internet and uploaded information to the relevant mobile application.
The information fed to the site are the farmer's name, survey number, village, cultivated paddy, acreage, whether the land is dry or wet. The E-crop registration was already completed for the 2020 Kharif season.
Recently, officials sought fingerprints of the respective farmers. As the process begins in all districts across the state, the pressure on the server increases and it slows down. This makes the process time-consuming.
However, to overcome this problem, the farmers are divided into three groups. In Kadapa district, it has been decided to work on any two days of the week and Sunday. The district needs to link fingerprints from 1,28,582 farmers, but so far only 65,713 farmers have been able to give their fingerprints.
More than 62,000 farmers would need to have their fingerprints linked to the net. Officials are trying to complete the work by April 15. Apart from the server problems, the biometric machines are malfunctioning. To catch up with time, the field staff is working even on holidays to feed information to the net.
In order to get insurance, the crop has to be registered first. Farmer fingerprints have also been made mandatory.
