Algeria: Quarter of a million peasants excluded from drought-related compensations!

President Director General of the National Fund for Agricultural Cooperation, Chérif Benhabyles, has revealed that many farmers won’t benefit from the drought-linkedfinancial compensations if the rains don’t pour down in the next month of January 2016.

He said to this effect that despite the registration of the equivalent of 250 thousand insured peasants in Algeria, out of a total 1.2 million peasants recorded by the National farming fund, the latter will not benefit from the compensation due to the negative impact of drought owing to technical obstacles that stand in the way of the activation of this type of the insurance specifically devoted to agricultural workers.

Mr Chérif Benhabyles further pointed out that in the case of natural disasters caused for instance by floods and snow-falls, the relevant authorities duly compensate the affected farmers, but the drought scourge on the opposite requires some technical measures linked to modeled veterinary technical surveillance to determine exactly the cause and the impact of the damage inflicted on the crops and cattle.

He also stressed that this procedure usually takes a long period of time to be carried through as the farmers’ insurance for drought is still on the backburner mostly due to red-tape hurdles.