Parbat, 7 March: Mahashila Rural Municipality is going to utilize the barren land. The rural municipality has taken this policy after the increasing trend of productive land becoming barren due to increasing youth migration, monkey terror and shortage of manpower.
Vacant and barren land in all six wards within the municipality is being leased for agricultural and livestock production. The municipality itself will mobilize volunteers to cultivate crops, fruits, and livestock on the barren land.
The 17th Village Assembly of the rural municipality had passed the Agricultural Institution Operation and Management Act 2081 with the aim of increasing agricultural production by utilizing barren land and creating employment. If the concerned landowner wishes to provide land for the use of the municipality, he has been requested to contact the concerned ward office or the agriculture branch of the rural municipality.
The municipality has requested that the reasons for making the land fallow, including migration, lack of active manpower, and other reasons, be mentioned, and that an application signed by one member of the household agreeing to use the land for at least 10 years, a copy of the landowner’s certificate, and a tax receipt be submitted by mid-Chaitu.
The municipality has stated that it will determine the fee based on the evaluation of the land and the recommendation of the committee and the municipality’s annual approved program and address it appropriately. Devendra Pandey, Chief Administrative Officer of the rural municipality, informed that all the barren land will be utilized.
According to him, crops will be cultivated on a geographical basis. He informed that millet, maize, wheat, barley, rice, potatoes, various fruits and commercial goat, chicken, buffalo farming farms will be operated. He said that volunteers appointed by the municipality under the One House One Job program will be mobilized for this.
Rural Municipality Chairperson Ishwari Bhusal said that the municipality has been running this program with the aim of achieving prosperity through agriculture. According to her, the municipality has no option but to utilize it itself as the number of people migrating from the village has increased and the farmlands have become barren.
Earlier, the municipality had been providing Rs 100,000 in cash and six months’ worth of food grains to the citizens returning to their villages as an incentive. He said that since that did not increase the attraction of returning to the villages, the municipality has now planned to plant crops by mobilizing its own manpower, he said.
The municipality has been running a fruit expansion program since the last fiscal year 2080/81 BS. Fruit seedlings including walnut, macadamia nut, mango, lemon, orange, banana and others were distributed to farmers with full subsidy. Chairman Bhusal said that farmers who had stopped cultivating food crops due to monkey terror and lack of manpower are expanding the fruit.
