Salt miners in Orissa's Ganjam district have urged the state government to treat salt sector at par with agriculture and provide them necessary incentives as given to mine labourers.

Production of salt had started this year, about a month late due to rains in January, and the yield would be satisfactory, Duryadhan Reddy, secretary, Humma-Binchhanapalli Salt Cooperative Society, said.

Ganjam is the major salt producing district in the state and about 20,000 people are engaged in this sector to make their livelihood.

However, due to lack of incentives which agricultural farmers are paid, salt farmers were passing through hard time, he said.

Other salt producing states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat were giving the same treatment to the salt sector as agriculture and giving facilities including cooperative loan and electricity at subsidised rates unlike Orissa, several farmers claimed.

In Orissa, salt miners do not get these facilities despite demand for it since long, Trilochan Sahu, a leading salt miner, said adding they were paying interest at 12 per cent for cooperative loan and higher electricity tariff.

The government also does not fix the minimum support price of salt like different agriculture products in Orissa, he said.

"Salt industry, once the pride of the district, will collapse if the government did not come forward to solve their problems," Sahu said.

Besides Ganjam, salt is also produced in Balasore and Puri districts of Orissa.

There were over 5,143 acres of salt producing sites in the state, but the operational area was restricted to little over 3035 acres, the sources said.

Salt production in the state was 29,995 metric tonnes last year, while the same was 23,479 metric tonnes and 28,690 metric tonnes in 2008-09 and 2007-08 respectively, they said.

The state is procuring salts from other states like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to meet its demands for both domestic and industrial use.