457 paddy procurement centres to be set up across Nizamabad

Nizamabad: Collector C Narayana Reddy directed the concerned department officials to make arrangements on a war footing for procurement of paddy in the district.

Narayan Reddy suggested setting up of paddy purchase centers at selected places across the district within two days. The Collector along with Police Commissioner KR Nagraj, Additional Collectors Chandrasekhar and Chitramishra had video conference with officials and directed them about the procurement of paddy.

In Nizamabad district, farmers have cultivated paddy in about 3,50 lakh acres during the current Rabi season, he explained with statistics.

The Collector said that harvesting has already been completed in many places and about 1.50 lakh MT of grain is drying on the roads. He suggested that in addition to collecting what is ready, one should also buy the grain that will be harvested later.

According to the Collector, 457 purchasing centers will be set up under the auspices of IKP MEPMA, a co-operative society similar to last year. Narayana Reddy said they would also take the initiative to set up additional centres if required.

Narayana Reddy said that even though there is little time to get the procurement centers ready at present, if the mandal, division and district level teams work in coordination and collectively, they will be able to procure more grain than last year. The Collector said sheds and tents should be set up at the purchase centers to provide drinking water to farmers. He directed officials to check the performance of the weighing machines, to provide labourer immediately and to make available moisture meters etc. to measure the moisture content.

The Collector explained that steps are being taken to provide up to 1600 lorries to transport paddy from the purchase centre to the rice mills.

The Collector suggested that plans should be made to move an average of about 20,000 MT of grain per day from the purchasing centrE to the rice mills in the district.

He, however, suggested that more labourer should be employed to ensure that the lorries do not stand still for hours during loading and unloading. The Collector asked the purchasing centre operators to make use of an app specially designed under the auspices of the District Civil Supplies Agency to monitor the movement of grain lorries.

The Collector said that all measures have been taken to ensure that the key gunny bags in the grain collection are made available as per the requirement.

Farmers were advised to bring the grain with fair average quality standards cleaned without dust and moisture not exceeding 17% and get full support price.

Police Commissioner Nagraj said police officers and staff should also co-operate at the field level for grain procurement. The CP directed the police officials to be vigilant as there is a possibility of some people trying to create a commotion by deliberately disrupting the grain procurement process in various mandals.

Nagraj directed the concerned CIs and SIs to set up joint check posts with the transport and agriculture departments at border areas like Kandakurti, Basara, Salura, Kamar Palli suburb, Kotagiri zone, Pothangal and other places to check the arrival of grain from neighboring States.

In the video conference, ZP CEO Govind, District Agriculture Officer J Govindu, DRDO Chander, DCO Simhachalam, MEPMA PD Rams, other district officers, tehsildars of the respective zones, SHOs of the police department, IKP officers and co-operative societies Chairmen, secretaries and others participated.