Officials of department agriculture extension (DAE) Barishal Division are taking wide spread preparation for preventing damage of upcoming cyclone Amfan in Barishal division.
Toufiqual Alam, deputy director of Barishal regional office of DAE, said already harvesting of more than 63 percent out of 1. 25 lakhs hectors of boro paddy cultivated land completed in the division. Among the harvested boro cultivated land of the division, 55 percent were of Barishal district, 70 percent of Patuakhali, 67 of Pirojpur, 51 of Jhalakati, 69 of Barguna and 68 of Bhola district.
Out of rest amount of cultivated boro-paddy about 25 percent ripen paddy would be harvested within May May 19 and only 12 percent would be on field due to not non-maturity. Divisional DAE official assumed that a major portion of around 50 thousand metric tons of cultivated paddy on rest 12 percent of cultivated land may be damaged in the field if Cyclone Amfan will hit the area.
We already started propagation through loudspeaker for harvesting the matured paddy rapidly and requesting teachers and students of educational institutions to help the local farmers for harvesting paddy of the region, divisional DAE official added. Divisional DAE officials said it is now our challenge to save cultivated beds of 67,313 hectors of Aush saplings and 12.5 thousand hectors of Aush seed beds.
If seed and sapling beds would be damaged by the affect of upcoming cyclone `Amfan’, then it will severely hit our upcoming Aush paddy production, they cautioned.
Muhammad Yamin Chowdhury, divisional commissioner, said we already directed DAE officials to take imitative for harvesting ripen paddy as soon as possible. However we could not direct to harvest immature green paddy. We are trying our best to save maximum portion non-harvested paddy from the assumed affect of upcoming cyclone Amfan.
Cyclone Shelters Prepared.
Barishal divisional commissioner Muhammad Yamin Chowdhury said administration are organizing ZOOM video conferencing meeting with health officials of the division for taking preparations to ready the cyclone shelters by maintaining social distance. For this reason numbers of cyclone shelters almost doubled this time.
He said earlier times there were 2,446 cyclone shelters including 2,320 schools cum cyclone shelters in the division. But now the number is upgraded to 4972 for maintaining assurances of social distances. We directed health officials for taking initiatives to maintain social distance in the shelters and affected areas if the cyclone hit this region. All official will meet again in ZOOM videoconference on Sunday late afternoon to update preparations about facing the cyclone Amfan.
— Masuk Kamal, Barishal