Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, IAS today held a meeting with Civil Supplies department officials and took stock of the paddy procurement in the state.
The Commissioner Civil Supplies informed that paddy procurement is going on smoothly across the state . So far 4.61 lakh MTS paddy has been procured in the state from 61,300 farmers through 3679 paddy procurement centres. The present availability of gunny bags is sufficient to procure 31 lakh MTS of paddy.
He stated that while 7.8 crore gunny bags are readily available, tenders for procuring eight crore gunny bags are being finalized today. In addition to that 2.5 crore gunny bags will be received from Jute Corporation of India shortly.
51 check posts have been established in 17 bordering districts of the state to ensure that paddy is not brought by middlemen from other states to the paddy procurement centres.
Chief Secretary directed the officials to upload the details of paddy procured same day so that payment can be made to the farmers at the earliest. He said that money is not a problem as the government has mobilized 5000 Crores so far for this purpose. As soon as the paddy is procured the same is being sent to mills. 4.3 lakh MTS paddy has been shifted to mills till today and as such there is no backlog, he said.
As the harvesting has not started in Warangal, Gadwal, Wanaparthy, Bhoopalpally and Nagarkurnool districts, paddy procurement centres have not been set up in these districts, Chief Secretary said and added that the paddy procurement centres will be set up once harvesting in these districts begins.
