The farmers are in distress as paddy could not be sold despite waiting for past seven days at the market yard. They are clueless as to why millers are not procuring paddy after they were asked to bring paddy to the market yard and given tokens.
The leftover paddy has raised questions about the procurement process in the district.
Meanwhile, officials of the Hilunga PACS said they are aware of the trouble of the farmers and stated the paddy procurement target has already been achieved leading to leftover paddy.
The District Supplies Officer stated action will be taken soon to increase the paddy procurement target and purchase the surplus consignment.
In another case, farmers of Dhenkanal have been troubled at several market yards as millers deduct four to five kgs per quintal of paddy citing quality issues. They are forced to go by the decision of millers when they have spent considerable amount on transportation of the agricultural produce.
Krushna Chandra Panda, a farmer, said, “Despite deduction we are ready to sell paddy as we cannot take it back and spend money on transportation.”
Hadibandhu Sethi, Dhenkanal District Supplies officer, said, “There is no guideline to deduct four or five kgs of paddy as alleged by farmers. However, I will direct officials to probe into the matter.”
https://youtu.be/v1paJYtv2ho
As the Rabi crop loans distribution process has begun, the Secretary asked the LAMPS and PACS’ staff to call off the strike, sources said.
Meanwhile, the staff of LAMPS and PACS said the agitation will continue until their demands are not met.
“The government is trying to threaten us issuing such orders but we will not withdraw our protest and continue until all our demands are fulfilled,” said secretary of Odisha State Cooperative Employees' Coordination Committee, Digambar Nayak.
The LAMPS and PACS’ staff are on dharna in front of the State Assembly over five point charter of demands which include pension scheme for elected representatives of LAMPS, medical insurance, government employees’ status and implementation of 7th Pay Commission recommendations in cooperative societies.
Earlier in September, the staff of LAMPS had submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Agriculture and Finance Ministers over their demands.
https://youtu.be/-WTpb35cAWA
District collectors and district supply officers of 12 districts, including the districts under the RDC Northern Division, were present in the meeting. Discussions were held on how to systemize the paddy procurement process and how the farmers will be paid their dues on time.
"After the paddy reaches the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) it will intimate Odisha Central Cooperative Bank about it. Within 24 hours the paddy will reach the mills and in another 24 hours the payment of farmers will be disbursed to their accounts," said Patro.
Earlier on October 26, Chief Secretary Aditya Padhi at the state-level paddy procurement committee meeting had informed that the Odisha government will procure 53 lakh quintal paddy this year. The government has plans to procure 44 lakh quintal paddy during Kharif and 9 lakh quintal paddy during Rabi seasons respectively.
The purchase outlets will be opened across the state by November and paddy procurement would continue till April, 2018. Paddy will be procured from farmers through 2576 Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) while 1436 millers will participate in the process. Those millers, who have not delivered 100 per cent of rice to government, have been barred from this process.
To participate in the process farmers have to provide plot details along with Aadhaar number. So far over 10 lakh farmers have registered with the government for the procurement process, including the sharecroppers.
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said consequent upon demonetisation of high value notes and the restriction on District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) to accept the Sustainable Banking Network (SBN) as deposits and for exchange of such notes, the DCCBs are facing a severe liquidity crunch. Besides, the currency chest branches of the commercial banks are not able to provide currency to the DCCBs to cope with the demands of the farmers at the PACS level for their Rabi operations.
The chief minister further said since PACS are treated at par with individuals in respect of drawal of funds from their accounts with the DCCBs, they are able to draw only Rs 24,000 per week from DCCBs to meet the credit requirement of their farmer members. As a result, they are unable to cater to the demand for crop loans, procurement proceeds and insurance claims pertaining to Kharif-2015.
He also informed the Prime Minister about the difficulties in transferring the procurement price of paddy from the apex State Cooperative Bank account to the farmers’ account held in different nationalised banks, cooperative banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), if it is a Jan Dhan account. Such transfers were rejected in many cases causing enormous hardship to the farmers.
Keeping in view these difficulties, Patnaik urged the Prime Minister to take necessary measures by directing the concerned authorities to make adequate currency available to the DCCBs by the Currency Chest branches of the commercial banks which should be monitored by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Regional Office, to enable the DCCBs to provide crop loans to the farmer members and also pay their paddy procurement proceeds as well as insurance claims.
The chief minister also requested the Prime Minister to lift restrictions imposed on PACS to draw Rs 24,000 per week so that they can cater to the credit requirements of the farmer members.
Besides, he also requested the Prime Minister to allow the procurement dues of the farmers, which is being transferred from a government account, irrespective of the amount, to be credited to the farmers account without insisting on the time consuming process of KYC (know your customer) verification.
In a letter to Union minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Ananth Kumar on Saturday, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said with the coverage of increased area under high yielding and hybrid varieties in the state, there is a need for enhancing the consumption level of fertilizers, both chemical and organic, to ensure sustainable crop production and higher productivity. Keeping this in view, the state government has launched a programme to increase fertilizer consumption to a level of 90 Kg per hectare in the next five years.
Patnaik said the state government had taken various steps such as provision of corpus funds for state agencies, namely Odisha State Cooperative Marketing Federation (MARKFED) and Odisha Agro Industries Corporation (OAIC) for pre-positioning of fertilizers. Besides, the state had also taken steps for construction of godowns at the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) level for pre-positioning of fertilizers in order to make iy available to the farmers of the state in time.
“All such steps will require handling of a huge quantity of different chemical fertilizers at various points in the state since the chemical fertilizers are made available to the state at present from factories located at far off places like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and also through ports, mostly In Andhra Pradesh.
To ensure smooth supply of fertilizers to various places in the state, we need to have sufficient number of railway rake points,” he pointed out.
The chief minister further said lack of the required number of railway rake points is a major stumbling block in timely supply of the required quantity of fertilizers to the farmers, especially during the peak period. Apart from this, the state is also facing operational difficulties in the existing 21 rake points due to inadequate infrastructure facilities. Besides, the state government has proposed establishment of three new rake points at Bamur (Angul), Rengali (Sambalpur) and Dunguripalli (Subarnapur) and provision of two point rakes in six places.
In a letter to all its area managers, the Markfed-Odisha has strictly directed them to henceforth ensure that cooperative societies buy fertilizers only from the federation.
The Markfed also barred all PACS, LAMPCS and FSCS to purchase urea from any other agencies including the Indian Farmer's Fertilisers Cooperative Limited (IFFCO).
It may be noted that Markfed is the only state-run agency which provides service in the field of marketing and distribution of chemical fertilizers to PACS/LAMPCS in the State. The State Government has also provided Rs 75 crore to Markfed for pre-positioning of urea.
However, there were allegations that some societies were becoming dealers of IFFCO by taking licenses from the district agriculture officer and thereby violating the rule.