Farmers seek e-pass to bring workers from other districts

Coimbatore: The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) on Monday sought e-passes for farm labourers from the neighbouring districts.
E-pass applications to bring the labourers are getting rejected, said AIKS district president S Palanisamy, who submitted a petition to the Coimbatore collector. “As the small onion harvest season has begun, farmers are struggling to bring labourers from Tirupur, Erode and Namakkal.The officials are giving e-passes to industries and those with GST numbers and not farmers,” he said.
Small onion is cultivated on 12,000 hectares in the district. “While small farmers manage with labourers in and around their villages, big farmers find it easy to get people from Tirupur and Erode,” said K Manikandan, a farmer from Thondamuthur. “ While I am willing to pay for a van to bring labourers, the person I am hired to bring them says that he cant get an e-pass. If we get too much rain in the next few days, the crop will be spoiled.”
The association also registered protest against the move to make central banks issue farmers ID card and not the agriculture department. “Agriculture officers used to visit our farms, check documents and issue the card. Now they want us to get the card from a bank manager, who we have to convince to visit our farm, verify documents like patta and chitta to issue the card, which is an impossible task,” said Palanisamy.