Farmers Lobby Press For Airport In Kolar

Farmers in Kolar are pitching for an airport , exclusively for exporting agri-produce.

There is also a demand for a port at Karwar for the exporting horticulture and acqua products.

The demand comes within days after the Prime Minister's green signal for an all-weather airport at Hassan.

The proposal for renovating the defence- owned airport was mooted when Veerappa Moily ministery was at the helm in the state.

But, when Tatas backed the proposed international airport at Bangalore, the farmers airport was put in the back-burner.

With the powerful Gowda community dominating the agriculture scene in Karnataka, the old proposal is being revived again.

 

We wanted to convey the demand for the airport to the Prime Minister on his visit to the KAIC on Saturday. Now, we plan to submit a memorandum to him at Delhi next week, minister of state for agriculture C Byre Gowda told Business Standard.

The memorandum will stress that these infrastructural facilities were a long-standing demand of the farmers exporting perishable produce such as fruits, vegetables and flowers out of Kolar and other parts of the state.

The cost of renovating the old Kolar airport which still boasts of a good runway will be a meagre Rs 6 crore, a project report conducted by a retired air marshal a few years back had estimated.

The airport was meant to help the flower and horticulture exporters in the southern districts of Karnataka, Kolar and Bangalore, while the Karwar port was to ship horticultural and acqua products from Bijapur, Belgaum, Dharwad and Uttara Kannada out of the state.

The proposal for activating the defence- owned Kolar airport was prepared by the Kolar administration and submitted to the Veerappa Moily government in 1993.

When the Chief Minister included the proposal for the Kolar airport in his budget speech the next year, the move gathered momentum with high-level discussions being held with the defence authorities.

But before the defence administration could even consider handing over the airport set up during the Second World War, vested interests promoting the Bangalore international airport blocked this proposal, high-level government sources said.

However, the much-hyped international airport at Bangalore has hit many snags. According to Byre Gowda, the international airport will take at least nearly seven years.

Exporters, in the meanwhile, lament about lack of adequate facilities like cold storage houses, refrigerated vans etc.

Nearly, Rs 3,000 crore worth of perishable products per annum are being destroyed due to lack of quick transportation, he said.

Last year, floriculture and horticulture exports registered a rapid increase. For example, while 9.2 metric tonnes of flowers were exported out of the state in 1992-93, whereas in 1995-96, this jumped to 132.74 tonnes.

While 53 metric tonnes of fresh fruits such as mangoes, grapes and other fruits were exported in 1990-91, last year's figures touched 94 tonnes. Vegetable exports doubled from 267 tonnes to 450 tonnes in the last five years.

The floriculture exporters, who have suddenly mushroomed in and around Bangalore, are keen to see flights touching the Kolar airport.

Presently, they despatch their products by air to Amsterdam from Bangalore.

But as flower exporters have increased from one to 15 this year, the South India Flowers Association (SIFA) has been desperately trying to beef up the woeful, post-harvest and marketing infrastructural facilities at the Bangalore airport terminus.

SIFA was in the process of tying up with KLM and with a Madras-based company