Mangaluru: MLC Ivan D’Souza held a press meet at his office at the MCC premises here, on March 8.
Speaking to the mediapersons, Ivan said, “In the 135th Vidhana Parishad joint session I had an opportunity to raise 20 questions. I raised important questions and during the zero hour I discussed important issues pertaining to hike in salary of professors and the problems faced by entrepreneurs in Mangaluru.”
He further said, “Rubber growers in Karnataka had earlier urged the state government to help them tide over the crash in the price of the commodity. Rubber is being cultivated in 1,17,637.50 acres of land in Karnataka and the total yield is 35,230 tons. Growers are in distress as the cost of production has overtaken their income. Many growers have stopped tapping rubber and some have even started felling the trees and growing alternate crops. The most worrying issue is the suicide of rubber growers and to solve this crisis Shivamogga and DK district deputy director of the Horticulture department had been to Kerala on a study tour to study the ‘Rubber Production Incentive Scheme’, which is implemented in the state of Kerala and submitted a report to the state government. After going through the report the state government will evaluate the pros and cons and later form a committee, which will benefit the rubber growers of the state.”
“Import of arecanut is a cause of concern for both growers and co-operatives. After going through the merits and demerits, scientists of the Horticulture department from the Bagalkot University have gone through the report for the formation of an arecanut committee. The Government has released Rs 108.79 crores for the arecanut growers as compensation for crop loss,” he added.
Corporator Praveen Chandra Alva , Former Mayor, Shashidhar Hegde and others were also present.
Now the pain of the rubber growers has penetrated to the State of Karnataka too. The State of Kerala is producing 90% of the rubber production in India. India being the 3rd in rubber consumption in the world, the liberal import of rubber from countries like Malaysia-Singapore-Vietnam-Thailand to make the industrialists of India happy by the current Government makes the deplorable predicament of the rubber farmers all across India very critical. 11 lakh families in Kerala are directly and indirectly associated with the once money cow called ” rubber industry”; thus close to 50 lakh people are seriously affected economically.… Read more »