Load enhancement fee on tubewells slashed to ₹2,500

Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday announced to slash fees for load enhancement on tubewells from existing Rs 4,750 to Rs 2,500. The chief minister said his government was committed to make agriculture a profitable venture. “This is a humble gift to food growers of our state by their own government,” he added.
Mann said Punjab was predominantly an agrarian economy with a large section of its population dependent on farming. But today a farmer does not want his son to do agriculture because of diminishing returns, he observed. This trend needs to be reversed, for which input cost has to be decreased so that farming becomes a profitable venture, he said.
The farmers faced a lot of difficulty in paying the load enhancement fees on tubewells due to which they have slashed it by nearly 50%, he said. The AAP government has introduced minimum support price for moongi, he added. Likewise, he said, direct sowing of paddy campaign has also got good response from farmers and these decisions will help in supplementing income of farmers on one hand and enhancing the soil health and saving precious water on the other.