ZIRO, May 2: Members of NGO Defence Club Ziro (DCZ) on 30 April repaired a five-metre-long damaged bund left by the owners of an abandoned paddy field along the Lanchi irrigation channel in Dobiu, in Lower Subansiri district.
The weak portion of the bund had been washed off, resulting in the lower part of the community irrigation channel and its tributaries drying up at the beginning of the transplantation of paddy from the nursery beds to the paddy fields, leaving the owners of hundreds of paddy fields at the mercy of the summer rain to start culturing fish nurseries in their paddy fields.
“The fish culture in paddy fields helps the farmers to recover some part of agriculture maintenance cost as wages of labourers are high in the Ziro valley,” DCZ chairman, Dr Dani Kacha, informed in a release.
He said the new embankment was erected by the club’s members using around 40 bamboos and 50 empty cement bags filled with soil “in order to protect the water from erosion during the summer session and also for proper distribution of water to the Sillang side paddy fields.”
The club’s members carried out the repair work without seeking either financial help from the government department or manpower from the affected owners of the paddy fields, the DCZ said.
It said that, since its inception in 1991, the club has planted ornamental saplings at the Old Ziro PWD guesthouse, the CHC in Old Ziro, and the government primary school in Kudung Barang, besides donating handmade dustbins to the Old Ziro CHC and to Gyati Taka General Hospital here.
The club has also organized several careers- and health-related counselling programmes from time to time.
“Recently, the club donated Rs 1,50,000 towards the chief minister’s relief fund to fight against Covid-19,” it said.
