The Coconut Cultivation Board has introduced a hotline number and a phone application called Coconut App to provide solutions to all the issues related to the diseases faced by the growers related to coconut cultivation, to make the cultivation successful and to get a high yield.
This hotline number provides the facility to get answers in Sinhala, Tamil and English languages.
Under the participation of the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries, Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera, the introduction of the mobile phone application for the introduction of this hotline number was held at the Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries. Mr. Panduka Weerasinghe, Chairman of Coconut Cultivation, Mr. Athila Weerasinghe, Managing Director, Professor Roshan Perera, Chairman of Coconut Development Authority and others participated in this event.
The facility of contacting hotline 1916 and getting solutions for any problem faced by the growers related to coconut cultivation will be done from today.
The Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries, Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera, who expressed his opinion here:-
There are small, medium and large scale coconut growers in our country. The problem that all of these people are facing today is various diseases and insect damage that spread in coconut cultivation. Especially diseases like white fly, red beetle, black beetle and Weligama coconut leaf disease.
Also, application of fertilizers to coconut cultivation is not done regularly. Currently, the annual production of coconuts in this country is 3000 million coconuts, but our goal is to increase that amount to 3600 million. The Minister further stated that such programs should be implemented in conjunction with technology to achieve this goal.
The Minister who called the technical telephone number 1916 was asked about the damage caused by the white fly. An official of the Coconut Cultivation Board answered the minister’s questions on the phone.