Economic activities in rural areas of the country’s northern districts, including Nilphamari, have badly been affected by BNP-led 20-party alliance enforced countrywide blockade and hartals that paralysed transports across the country.
Farmers in the areas are incurring huge amount of losses as they cannot sell their newly harvested perishable products in the market due to lack of buyers and necessary transports.
Meanwhile, owners of many small mills and factories are also being forced to keep shut productions to avoid incurring losses and attacks of miscreants.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, many farmers said they were incurring losses despite yielding bumper production of winter vegetables like potato, cauliflower, brinjal and others crops this year.
“I had cultivated potato on one acre of land. Production was satisfactory. But I had to sold those out in low prices in the local wholesale market as buyers from Dhaka and other districts had not come to this area due to the ongoing blockade,” said Abu Bakar, a farmer of Kalar Dangga village in Nilphamari Sadar.
“I have sold the potato at only Tk4.00 per kilogram,” he said.
Despite incurring losses, Abu Bakar had no other options but harvesting his potato to maintain his six member family.
Unlike Bakar, Many farmers of his area are yet to harvest their crops from the farmland in order to realize at least their minimum production cost.
There are nine cold storage in the district. And all the cold storage have stored potato of their full capacity.
Raj Kumar Poddar, owner of Royalex Metal Industries in Saidpur upazila of Nilphamari, said: “We have incurred huge amount of losses in the last few days as we had to keep shut our shops due to the blockade.”
SM Shafiqul Alam Dablu, president of Nilphamari Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said: “ “The countrywide blockade has almost paralyzed the rural economy of the northern region due to non plying of commodity carrying trucks.”
“If the blockade continues for few more days, we will be forced to shut our factories,” he said.
