After toiling for over four months preparing salt pans, salt farmers in Prakasam district were gearing up to make hay in May, when summer reaches its peak. Now, their hopes of getting a decent return on their back-breaking labour look bleak, thanks to the incessant unseasonal rains in coastal Prakasam over the last 15 days.
The situation is akin to that in 2010 when cyclonic storm Laila struck the Prakasam coast, snatching away the just-scrapped salt from the pans, laments a group of salt producers in Motumala village near Kothapatnam. It is in May that salt production peaks.
‘’We will not be bothered if there are a couple of spells of rain during the summer. But the continual showers over the past two weeks have left us clueless as to what to do,” complains another group of salt producers in coastal Biramgunta village.
