Acute shortage of labourers hampers harvesting Boro crops in the district.

Ripe paddy is still lying in the fields and may be damaged at any time if hailstorm hits the area, feared farmers.

Moreover, the situation is worsening day by day due to heavy downpour. Meanwhile, many of the Boro fields in low lying areas went under rainwater. The farmers are facing difficulty harvesting crops from water-logged paddy fields.

Acute labour crisis is prevailing in this Boro crop season, as most of the farm labourers have migrated to other places just for getting higher wages.

Finding no other alternatives, growers' family members are working for harvesting Boro crops.

Although some farm labourers are available in different areas, they are not enough to meet up the requirements. Moreover, landless and poor farmers could not afford unexpected higher wages.

“I have cultivated Boro on three bighas of land and meanwhile, crops on one and a half bighas of land still remained in the field, waiting to be harvested but I could not do it due to shortage of labourers”, said Abdur Rashid, a farmer of Malibari union in Sadar Upazila.

“I spent a whole day on Wednesday for searching of farm labourer, but none was available, so I decided to harvest paddy alone from the next day”, said farmer Sukumar Chandra of Ghagoa union.

“Locally we get Tk 200 to 300 as wage per day, but if we migrate to other places we can earn Tk 500 to 600 per day and due to this, we prefer to go to other areas for earning more money,” said Abdul Quddus, a farm labourer of Kholahati village in Sadar upazila.

“Boro cultivation is now so costly, moreover labour crisis is additional problem for growers, last year we achieved better yield of Boro crops, but this year Boro farming was affected by natural disaster,” said Sontosh Barmon, a farmer of village Kholahati.