Bhubaneswar: The cyclonic storm Fani which caused extensive damage to Odisha in general and Puri district in particular, had played havoc with cold storage units.
The fact that even after more than a month, cold storages in Puri and other affected areas are yet to resume operations indicates the extent of damage they had suffered in the trail of Fani destruction.
In the absence of adequate support from the state government, banking institutions and insurance companies, the cold storages set up with latest technology are in shambles. As a result, farmers are unable to stock their agriculture produce, especially
vegetables.
A visit to some of the cold storages in Puri district and other regions has revealed that the cold storage units which are otherwise used by farmers to store their produce to increase their shelf life are struggling to resume operations.
“Some of our major expensive components of the cold storages like the puffed walls which were made from latest technologies have suffered massive losses. We are yet to reconstruct the damaged infrastructure as we are deprived of services from the private insurance companies. Most of them are not settling the claims as they are huge,” said an owner of a cold storage unit.
He added that not only insurance firms are ditching them on timely settlements but the banking institutions are also not disbursing reconstruction loans to ensure the cold storages in Puri and other areas are repaired and can restart operations.
Experts claim that with the shutdown of important cold storages in Puri and other areas, vegetable prices are set to soar and the livelihood of farmers is at stake. Janardhan Sahoo, Secretary, Cold Storage Association of Odisha told Orissa POST, “During this quarter of the year, the prices of vegetables remain high and with an added impact of the cyclonic destruction, the non-functioning of cold storages in major vegetable producing areas would push the prices up. This will affect the middle class consumers and the farmers’ community. Puri and Cuttack are the major vegetable producing belts and these regions are going to be hit by the delay in restarting of cold storages.”
He added that around 10,000 families of farmers are dependent on a cold storage to store their produce but with the halt in their operations due to non-recovery of the post-cyclone losses, the agriculture sector is going to suffer a setback. With the onset of monsoon the storage of farm produce of thousands of farmers would face a mammoth
challenge.
Recently, the state government had asked bankers at a state level Bankers’ Committee meeting to expedite the process of helping the farmers to recover while insurance firms were asked to give impetus to their works.
However, cold storage units are irked by the financial institutions’ delay in coming to their aid and the government’s dithering to pressurise the banks and insurance firms to intervene before the affected areas see more losses.
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