Stubble burning: Farmers urged to use Unnat Kisan app
The district administration has been undertaking awareness as well as enforcement campaigns to curb farm fires in SAS Nagar in order to abide by the instructions issued by the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal.
DC Aashika Jain said that the officials from the agriculture and other departments have been reaching out to the farmers in the villages to make them aware of the crop residue machinery available in the district. They were also told about the Unnat Kisan app developed by the Government of Punjab available on Playstore and App store for locating the machinery in their proximity. The app has information (updated from time to time) of the machinery owners that can be hired on rent by the farmers for in-situ as well as ex-situ disposal of stubble without setting it on fire.
Besides it, mapping of a number of baler operators has been done with the industrial units having a handsome capacity to use stubble bales as fuel. The district has also offered sites for dumping/storage of the bales of stubble meant for use of industrial units as prepared by baler operators.
The DC further said that ADCs of the district have been deputed as the supervisory officers of the sub-divisions where SDMs have been tasked with overall responsibility of their respective sub-divisions.
The DC said two confirmed cases of farm fires were reported in Sinhpur and Rauni where an environment compensation of Rs 7,500 was imposed besides marking red entries in the revenue records.
Farmers honoured for not burning stubble
Rupnagar: In a special function organised by the District Administration and the Punjab Pollution Control Board at District Administrative Complex on Monday, DC Himanshu Jain honoured progressive farmers for not burning stubble for over three years. Addressing the farmers on this occasion, the DC said with an aim to curb incidents, the farmers of every village are being made aware of harmful effects of stubble burning, he added. He said only 47 cases of stubble burning were reported in Rupnagar last year, a significant drop as compared to the number in 2022.
