The procurement agencies have procured more than 93 percent of the total arrived wheat in the mandis of Punjab so far and paymentsamounting to Rs 7,594 crore have already been transferred to the bank accountsof 2.26 lakh beneficiary farmers under the newly implemented direct benefittransfer (DBT) scheme.
The Chief Secretary, Ms Vini Mahajan, disclosed thisafter chairing a high-level meeting to review the ongoing wheat procurementoperations amidst the Covid surge in the agrarian state, here on Saturday.
She said 71.48 LMT of the 76.32 LMT wheat had alreadybeen procured, which accounts for over 93 per cent of the total arrival. Thiswas despite the fact that nearly 300 per cent more wheat has arrived in themandis this year as compared to 29.32 LMT arrival recorded during thecorresponding period last year of which 27.32 LMT was procured in the previousRabi marketing season till this day.
Reiterating Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh’sresolve of procuring every single grain of wheat arriving in the mandis, theChief Secretary said the state government has already set up ‘farmers helpdesks’ in the grain markets across the state, where Mandi Board officials andIT professionals were assisting the peasants in their registration on theCentre’s ‘Anaaj kharid’ portal to ensure timely payment directly into theirbank accounts under the DBT scheme.
As many as 7 lakh of the 10 lakh farmers have alreadyuploaded their documents on the said portal in the state till date.
Instructing the Food and Civil Supplies department andMandi Board officials to ensure timely payment to the farmers and seamlesslifting of the procured stocks from the mandis, Ms Mahajan sought furtheracceleration in the pace of lifting of the purchased food grain from the mandisto avoid overcrowding and any loss to the procured stocks due to inclementweather.
She informed that nearly 22,000 arhtiyas (commissionagents) were earlier registered with the Food and Civil Supplies department andpayments were transferred into their bank accounts for making further paymentsto the farmers. However, from the current Rabi marketing season with theintroduction of the DBT scheme, the payments were being directly transferred bythe procurement agencies into the bank accounts of the farmers for the sale oftheir produce.
To ensure the health and safety of farmers, the arhtiyas,labourers, employees of procurements agencies and other stakeholders, the ChiefSecretary said the state government has set up Covid vaccination camps in all154 market committees across the state to inoculate the people above the age of45 years visiting grain markets. More than 6,142 eligible persons have beenvaccinated at these camps in the state so far.
The Additional Chief Secretary Development Anirudh Tiwaripointed out that the state control room set up by the Mandi Board haseffectively resolved all 650 telephonic complaints/ issues related to the wheatprocurement so far to the satisfaction of the complainant farmers. He alsoinformed that 12.44 lakh passes had been issued so far to the farmers to managethe staggered movement of wheat in view of the Covid crisis to avoidovercrowding in the mandis.
On the issue of lifting, the Principal Secretary Food andCivil Supplies KAP Sinha informed that at present, there was no shortage ofgunny bags in the grain markets. However, there were initially some problemsdue to the non-functioning of the jute mills in Kolkata at its full capacitydue to the ongoing Assembly elections in West Bengal, which had adverselyimpacted the supply of gunny bags in Punjab.
He also informed that 14.2 crore gunny bags had alreadybeen used for packaging of wheat besides one crore bags per day were beingsupplied to all the grain markets across the state.