Severe drought hits plantations

by P. Rajaratnam in Nuwara Eliya

The farmers, cultivators and horticulturist are all looking up the sky and for the grace of weather gods for rain! The entire plantations including tea crops are in the brink of devastations due to the ongoing severe drought for the past several months.

Work in the tea plantations have been drastically cut down, and the workers are put into grave economic hardships for want of employment since they are a daily paid lot. Meanwhile, all horticulturist and flower growers in Nuwara Eliya too are facing the same problem, due to adverse weather conditions prevalent at the moment here, particularly the flower growers get their flower gardens ready to complete in the annual flower show scheduled during the April festive season here and the flower plants which they have planted are getting withered due to the drought and the ground frost experienced during the night.

However, the leading hotels such as the Grand Hotel, which had won the annual flower show for the past thirty six years continuously had been taking all precautionary measures to save their exotic flower plants with polythene covers and under glass houses put up at heavy expense.