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Unemployment is one of the serious problems of today’s time. The Government of Gujarat is now celebrating Vibrant Gujarat programme, where a platform has been created to attract investors and create new employment opportunities.
It is surprising that at a time when the Gujarat Forest Department has tried to snatch the livelihood of the Agarias by banning entry into the small desert of Kutch.
The Agarias of Santalpur are the traditional salt farmers of Gujarat, who cultivate salt in small deserts, contributing about 20% of Gujarat’s total production.
After making salt, Agariya sells it to different factories, but this year two-three months have passed and only four months are left in the season, if Agariya is not allowed to make salt then the nearby units will be closed forever. And millions of people directly and indirectly associated with them may face unemployment and loss of livelihood.
Chirag Rajgor said that during the season, about 20 lakh tonnes of salt is produced in Santalpur. Agariao provides employment to thousands of people from salt production to sales. People of 24 villages of Satalpur, called Chorad area, are dependent on the salt production business. Farmers and thousands of laborers have become unemployed due to the Forest Department blocking the way for salt production. Many difficulties have arisen affecting the economic situation in the diocese.
The settlement report has been submitted by the forest department to the Gujarat government, even as all the agariyas whose names are included in the government list have been denied entry.
Salt is produced in the small desert of Kutch, only Satalpur is being stopped from producing salt, while our fellow farmers in Dhangdhara, Patdi, Halvad, Maliya, blocks have come to the desert two months ago and started extracting their salt. We are not even allowed to prepare our own salt fields. We don’t understand why such discrimination is done only to us?
We have been cultivating salt from generation to generation and we traditional farmers are very disappointed with this dual attitude of the government.
The Forest Department refused to give us anything in writing regarding the reason for denying entry.
If this problem of Agarias is not resolved in future, then more than 5000 local Agaria people may be forced to march from Satalpur to Gandhinagar like Gandhiji and protest in front of the Gujarat government.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.