PESHAWAR: The provincial government is assessing the damage caused to agriculture and livestock in the militancy-hit Malakand region to devise a mechanism for rehabilitating the affected farmers there.

‘As of July 31, the losses suffered by the farming and livestock sectors in the six militancy-affected districts were assessed to be more than Rs65 billion,’ officials said, adding that farmers in Swat, Buner, Malakand, Shangla, Upper Dir and Lower Dir districts needed immediate support.

Last year Swat alone produced 143,324 tons of fruits from orchards on 13,119 hectares and 128,018 tons of vegetables from 10,240 hectares. Comparable statistics for this year were not available for any district.

Swat’s production of fruit and vegetable had been on the rise as during 2007-08 it produced 42,997 tons of peaches, 6,110 tons of plum, 7,515 tons of pear, 300 tons of grapes, 182 tons of almond, 50,355 tons of apple, 4,000 tons of citrus, 6,450 tons of apricot and other fruits in small quantities. It produced 110,200 tons of onion, 800 tons of garlic, 66,057 tons of tomato, 16,569 tons of potato and small quantities of some other vegetables.

The government has approved Rs703 million to rehabilitate farmers in the Malakand region by giving them soft loans, seeds, plants, fertilizers, livestock etc, to enable them to start their lives afresh.

Upon the government’s request, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have imparted training to about 350 staffers of the departments concerned, who are busy updating the data about the losses suffered by the farmers in Malakand. To make the exercise swift, employees from other districts are also being deputed in the affected districts.

The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation has also expressed willingness to assist the farmers by providing technical support to them.

The WB has developed a proforma on which the staffers concerned are collecting information to evaluate losses suffered by farmers.

‘We started work on July 13, the day the return of internally displaced persons to their hometowns started. Some areas are still inaccessible but we are adopting other measures to assess the quantum of damages,’ officials associated with the task told Dawn. The exercise, they said, needed to be completed soon because it would become harsher in the approaching winter.

According to them, peach, persimmon and plum had become ripe but the farmers could not pluck them due to the conflict. All the farmers, they said, would be compensated appropriately, but the process would be need-based. For instance, they said, a widow woman who had lost one sheep would be compensated before a man who had lost 10 buffaloes.

‘We have lost our genetic pool of livestock. There is some special breed of livestock that we want to increase,’ they said.

Most of the fruit-producing areas have been destroyed and plantation of fruit trees and their full growth will take four to five years. Three to four months will be required for sowing vegetables.

‘We are looking towards donor organisations to help us in the rehabilitation process,’ the officials said. The assessment exercise, they added, would be completed in a month after which the donor organisations would be approached to identify the areas where they could provide assistance.