Floods: Temerloh farmers lose over RM120,000 worth of vegetables, fish

TEMERLOH: The Temerloh Area Farmers Organisation (PPK) has incurred losses of more than RM120,000 due to the flooding in the district.

Its corporate project manager Nur Azmi Mat Zain, 29, said about thousands of crops in the orchards in Kampung Semantan here were destroyed after the area was submerged in 0.6m of water since Dec 18.

He said that this was the first time the site had been hit by floods since it started operations in 2017.

"The floods caused us not to be able to harvest a total of 2,000 cucumbers; we only managed to harvest three tonnes of eggplants, and the eight days old cucumber plants were also damaged,” he told Bernama when met at the vegetable farm.

Nur Azmi had earlier received a visit from Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Industries Datuk Seri Ahmad Hamzah, who came to inspect the destruction of the project due to the floods, and to provide assistance to the affected members.

Apart from the vegetable planting project, Nur Azmi said the floods also caused losses of about 1,800kg of farmed catfish in Kampung Bangau here after three cages were damaged and broken by wood carried by strong currents.

According to him, the vegetables and catfish are for the market around Temerloh and the Selayang Wholesale Market in Selangor, with a price of around RM13 per kilogramme for catfish, eggplant (RM6), chili (RM15) and cucumber (RM2).

Meanwhile, Ahmad, when met by reporters, said 400 members of PPK Temerloh who were affected by the floods received food aid, which included basic necessities such as rice, flour, biscuits, milk, oil and eggs.

He said that assistance related to crop fertigation farming, such as polybags, fertilisers and seeds, would be channelled to those affected.

For fish farming, the assistance given would not exceed 50% of the loss assessment, or other appropriate assistance to be given to the affected parties. - Bernama