The Government has admitted that paddy procurement process is facing hurdles.
Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs Minister Saryu Roy said on Tuesday after a review meeting that major issues were coming from farmers, including their non-preparedness and reluctance. He also said that imposition of PoS based distribution of food-grains and kerosene helped the department stopping leakages tremendously.
“It is true that we are slow in paddy procurement, mainly, because most of the times farmers come unprepared. We use to send them SMS to come at our centres, but they refuse saying that the paddy is not prepared. Moreover, their visit to the centre has remained much lesser in number compared to the number of SMSs we have sent,” claimed Roy after the review meeting, where district officials responsible to carry out department plans were also present.
Paddy procurement process in Jharkhand began at the specified procurement centres from last month itself. The process is scheduled to continue till March 31, 2017, which has also been kept as the last date of registration for the farmers to take part in this season’s procurement.
“Those who are ready, have not been sent SMS to come. And those who have got SMS are not ready with their paddy. This is the problem. So, we have asked officials to send SMS to three times more farmers on daily basis and also to spend more on advertisements,” said Roy. He also ruled out alleged absence of officials at registration centres.
The government has fixed Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs. 1,470 per quintal as specified by the Union government plus additional bonus of Rs 130 per quintal by the State government to take MSP per quintal to Rs 1,600. As per government data, there are 417 functional procurement centres in the State as of now, from where the government has targeted to procure at least 4 lakh metric tonnes of paddy this year.
Meanwhile, Roy said that the government and the opposition needed to sit together and resolve issues, so that upcoming Assembly session turns fruitful. Roy, who is also Parliamentary Affairs Minister, said that the session scheduled from January 17 was shortened due to upcoming Jharkhand Global Investors’ Summit.
“Global Investors’ Summit is a global event, which was already fixed on February 16-17. It will take at least 10 days of rigorous monitoring from top level before the event of such a scale commences. Then, budget cycle is also about to be changed from next year and we will present budget only for April-December this year. The Calendar Year itself would be financial year from 2018. Moreover, we are trying to compensate number of sittings by working on Saturdays also. So, for this time, shortening of budget session must be taken as an exception,” said Roy.