Regional centre of Food Corporation of India (FCI) in Jharkhand has countered the Government for holding it responsible for low paddy purchases made in the State this year.
Counting its achievements during last year in region on Thursday, FCI Regional General Manager Amit Bhushan said that in place of trying to introspect why it was unable to procure lesser paddy in districts where it had got its own procurement centres set-up, the Government was contrarily playing game of passing the buck on the central agency.
“We procured 35,000 MT paddy from Palamu Division against target of 30,000 MT for the paddy season this year whereas private agency NCMSl appointed by FCI through tender has procured around 1,00,000 MT paddy from eight districts of South Chhotanagpur and Kolhan this year. At the same time, the Government could procure merely 55,000 MT of paddy against target of 1.55 lakh MT for the season this year despite the fact that the areas it went for procurement were blessed with excessive paddy production,” claimed Bhushan.
Though Food, Public Distribution and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy couldn’t be approached for his comments over the matter, he had gone scolding government officials in recent days for low procurement of paddy and for unplanned working culture in the system. Notably, date for paddy procurement has ended on April 30 in State with leaving thousands of farmers still waiting for their turn to sell paddy directly to Government.
“We wrote to the Government on numerous occasions to increase number of paddy procurement centres but it seems the officials were busy paving way for middlemen to come into picture through unnecessary delay of paddy collection by millers from procurement centres. In place of blaming us, the Government could have gone through a self assessment and introspection process which could have definitely lead them to correct answers about situation,” said Bhushan.
Going a step further, Bhushan said that the government never appeared to bother about using Union government’s CMR Control Order-2016 on time and in right way, which could have effectively prevented intrusion of middlemen and delay of millers.
“But our repeated letters about millers’ undue delay in disposal of paddy from procurement centres were ignored or avoided. It appears State government was supporting millers in their way of making crores of rupee,” charged Bhushan.
Meanwhile, he said that FCI had constructed 45 godown in different parts of the State last year with cumulative capacity of 1.28 lakh MT and was in process of getting lands from government in at least 14 locations where no bidder appeared due to land issues even after repeated tenders. He said that the agency had recruited 70 new employees in the State last year which has resulted in increased efficiency.