DOHA: The Ministry of Environment (MoE) has identified 71 farmhouses whose owners had built labour camps, warehouses and industrial workshops on these facilities in flagrant violation of the law.
The violators couldn’t, however, be booked because the law does not have punitive provisions. It is, therefore, being replaced with a new and extensive legislation to help stop the misuse of agricultural farms.
There are currently 1,400 farms in the country and 71 of them have been involved in violations, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported yesterday.
The new law being drafted would arm the environment ministry with the powers to act against those who are found misusing the farmhouses.
Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser Al Thani (pictured), Director-General of Agricultural Research and Development Department of the Ministry of Environment, was quoted as saying that in 99 percent of the violations, labour lodgings, industrial workshops and storage facilities were found built at farmhouses. All these illegal structures have come up on farms in the past 15 years, Al Thani said.
The present law doesn’t have provisions to punish the violators, he added.
The official pointed out that based on a study, electricity is to be supplied to the farming sector at subsidised rates.
In Qatar, some 80 percent of the animal fodder that is produced is consumed locally. The cultivation of fodder needs a lot of water, he said.
Desalinated water is used in irrigation so once an upcoming desalinated water plant is commissioned, there would be plenty of water to irrigate the farms, said Al Thani.
The Peninsula
