Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday assured the House of effective steps to prevent crop damage by wild animals, disclosing that Sub Divisional Magistrates and Divisional Forest Officers (Territorial/Wildlife) had been authorized to grant permits to farmers for hunting Wild Boars and Roz-antelopes. He was responding to a call attention raised by MLA Amarjit Singh Sandoa to draw the Chief Minister’s attention to the non-implementation of the proposal to install barbed wires in order to separate villages in Ropar, Anandpur Sahib, Garhshankar and Balachaur assembly segments from the forest areas.Reiterating his government’s firm commitment to curb the menace of wild animals in the Kandi areas, the Chief Minister told the House that a Pilot Project for fencing agricultural fields for protecting the crops from wild animals in these areas has been approved under RKVY scheme. A provision of Rs. 8.16 crore was made for the year 2017-18, and Rs. 8.00 crore had been provided for 2018-19 for this purpose, he added.The Chief Minister said his Government was fully sensitised to the hardships faced by the farmers on account of extensive damage caused to their crops by wild animals i.e. wild boars, neel-gais (Roz-antelopes), Barasinghas, etc, in various villages of Kandi areas. Several reports of such incidents had been received and the authorities had advised the farmers to keep vigil at night in order to protect their crops from such wild animals, said Captain Amarinder Singh.The Chief Minister assured the House of his government’s grave concern about this matter and disclosed that concerted efforts were being made to control the crop damage with effective implementation of existing laws and provision of more funds for fencing of agriculture fields in these areas. He pointed out that Rs 1.33 crore had already been sanctioned by his government towards compensation to farmers against damage caused to crops by wild animals.