Horticulture officers stage demo against UATT2.0

Members of horticulture officers welfare association and assistant horticulture officers association led by its functionaries Shanthi and Karthik, staged a demonstration at Erode on Thursday urging the government to drop its plan to integrate horticulture officers in the state under the Uzhavar Aluvalar Thodarbu Thittam (UATT) 2.0 for which a GO was issued in 2023.
The scheme would aim to promote arid land. But now under the scheme the government intended to ask all field level officers of Agriculture, Horticulture, Agriculture Marketing and Engineering departments to work under it and deploy each staff in each village as agriculture extension officers to meet ryots and explain the crop pattern and government schemes etc. The officials in the 4 departments have specialised subject knowledge only. So, asking horticulture officers to explain the crops in agriculture department would hit them and also ryots. Similarly, the other department officers also face constraints in explaining to the ryots on other subjects of other departments. Besides, it would mean snatching of the technical skill of each department officers from reaching the ryots. It would completely hit the growth in all 4 departments. Above all, agri department has over 2600 field officers and horticulture has 1500 officers. To streamline the officers posting in villages more number of horticulture officers are shifted from one district to another causing great hardship to many women officers. To specialise in the particular subject alone, the officers qualified in respective subjects were appointed and the then CM Karunanidhi created separate horticulture department in the name of restructure of an integrated agriculture department.
Now, the government is planning to restore the old integrated system which could hit not only the existing staff but also the upcoming graduates of horticulture in getting jobs in the department. Similarly, the staff of other three wings would also suffer. Hence the government should drop the UATT 2.0 scheme fully. Othersise, as per the decision of the state leaders of the associations, their stir would continue, they added.