Imphal, December 16 2009: Orange traders of neighoburing states of Manipur are confronting all odd of bad road connectivity of Tamenglong district as orange of this district is highly demand in their respective states.

This help a lot in improving their economy, farmers revealed.

Interaction with orange farmers of the district during the recently concluded Orange Festival in Tamenglong district headquarters on December 10, farmers revealed that their produce are buying by the traders coming from neighbouring states of Assam, Meghalaya etc.

K Hialong, chairman of Old Mandu village who participated in the festival opening a stall said that most of the orange produce at Mandu and its neighbouring villages were mostly collected by the traders coming from Silcher and Lower Assam.

They travelled throughout the stretch of bad road with trucks to reach the villages and collected orange.

Since their arrival at the villages, lost of orange due to prolong storage had not occurred no more.

The worries of farmers of not having market to sale their produces had over, he added.

A total of 30 full loaded trucks of orange have been exported by the traders during this season.

They collected orange from different farmers as one farmer could not produce enough orange to supply a load of truck.

In such manner, farmers could earn around Rs 40,000 in a year very easily, the relief farmer added.

Ngeikulang, another farmer from Tousem village also revealed that traders from Karimganj and Silcher send vehicle for collection of orange from their village.

They sell Re 1 per orange.

But the size of the orange is bigger they even buy at Rs 1.30 per orange.

As told by the traders to them, this orange is exported in Meghalaya too, he said observing that traders are coming to their village because of the unique taste and high quality.

With the arrival of the traders, their economic have been improve to certain extend but still they feel the need of improving the road communication so that they could easily export their produces.

The farmers also expressed hoped that their living condition will improve to a great extend once the Tamenglong-Haplong road.

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