Union Secretary praises TS for procurement of paddy

Hyderabad : Ravikant, Secretary, PDS, Government of India, complimented the system of procurement of paddy in the State of Telangana. "It’s really appreciable that the State has arranged a procurement centre for every 5 kms to facilitate the farmers to get the minimum support price without any strain," he said.

Ravikant who was on a visit to the State to inspect the system of procurement of paddy and also the implementation of PDS, met with FCI officials also along with the officials of the Civil Supplies, in Hyderabad today. He spoke directly with the farmers who were busy in selling their produce at the procurement centres at Khammam, Kothagudem, Siddipet, Manchiryal, Bhoopalapalli districts, through a video call from Hyderabad. He also spoke with the beneficiaries of PDS scheme who were drawing their quota from the ration shops using IRIS system.

He also expressed his eagerness to extract the actual information from them while posing questions like “How come the yield this year is more than the previous year? Are you getting the MSP? Are the procurement centres within your reach? How much time it is taking to get the money in to your bank account, after selling your produce? What are the problems you are facing in the marketing of your produce?” and expressed his satisfaction with the positive response he got for each one of his query.

The policies of the State Government really deserves appreciation in providing MSP to farmers, in depositing money directly into the account of farmers avoiding middlemen, in IRIS, Bio-metric, ration-portability etc, he opined adding that this really stands as a model to other Sates.

He also inquired from the officials the reasons - for purchasing 208 % more paddy so far in this year. Responding to it, Akun Sabharwal, commissioner submitted him a list of reasons like timely rains, uninterrupted power supply all through, Ryotu bandhu scheme and various other new projectes the State Govt has launched.  He also enlightened the visiting Secretary with statistics saying that this year purchases reached 39 lakh tonnes so far where as it was only 16lakh tons last year.

Sabharwal also submitted his requisition for releasing expeditiously various dues pending with FCI and other departments in the case of market cess, RDcess commission etc.,

The Commissioner drew the attention of Ravikant to the fact that portability system was a huge success in the State and said that only in the last ten months, 1,13,74,658 transactions took place under this. When we found that the aged and women are facing difficulties in getting ration items using bio-metric system, now we started using IRIS so far in 5186 rations shops spread over 16 districts, he explained.