looking at the hardship paddy farmers of the State facing in terms of selling their produce to the cooperatives lAPMS/PACS the Government has made announcement that entire paddy would be purchased during 2015-16. Farmers can get MSP of the produce only though lAMPS/PACS which have been nonfunctional in various parts of Jharkhand.
“I can assure here that from the next fiscal we would purchase entire kharif produce from farmers through lAMPS and PACS. We are in touch with Center over how to deal with liquidity problem. As far as this year is concerned, the purchase can be done only till March 30 2015,” said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Saryu Roy who also admitted procurement order has been delayed for this year and could be issued only in January. Only 466 MT of paddy was purchased during 2013-14 and the figure is expected to dip even further this year.
On repeated questions from JVM’s Pradeep Yadav on the issue the Minister said that the Government under the guidelines set by the Center cannot purchase produce from those lAMPS/PACS and give it to rice mills that have dues on their heads. The agencies are declining to buy kharif produce from the farmers who are forced to sale paddy to marketers at much lower rate than the MSP.
“Out of total 95 rice mills in the State except 20 the rest have dues against them. Several lAMPS and PACS are also cash stripped thus unable to sale the kharif to the Government,” he said adding that Government would also extend its helping hand to such agencies.