Farmers list out irregularities in RS Puram Uzhavar Sandhai

Coimbatore: Two days after the public protested against sellers and farmers in Uzhavar Sandhai for overpricing their produce, the farmers associations on Wednesday said that there are many irregularities taking place in the market. As a result, both the farmers and the public, for whom the concept was introduced in 1996, do not benefit. They said the Uzhavar Sandhai monitoring committee set up by the chief minister and district officer have to start taking action to sort out these issues.

The farmers' association submitted a petition to the district collector on Wednesday during agriculture grievance meeting about the irregularities in the farmers market. "Uzhavar Sandhai at R S Puram is one of the five best markets in the state. But, the market has been riddled with many issues for the past couple of years," said the petition. "There is a major communication and working gap between farmers and the Uzhavar Sandhai managing agriculture officers," it said.

The association said there were many instances of traders either using identity cards issued for farmers or traders obtaining farmer identity cards to come and sell their produce.

"There are many traders who show a small plot of land where they may be growing one crop while applying for an identity card but are not full-fledged farmers," said district secretary of the association P Kandasamy. "There are also many traders who permanently claim to be related or hired by a farmer to bring their produce and sell it. They pay the farmer a fixed sum," he said. "All the four Uzhavar Sandhais now have more traders than farmers," he added.

The petition also accused the agriculture officers of not giving the real farmers proper shop allotments and pricing for their vegetables. "There are a lot of irregularities with shop allotments. Farmers do not get preference or the right positioning. Despite our produce quality being good, the officers and traders fix a low price," said Kandasamy. "So, the farmer and the public do not benefit, because they end up buying vegetables from traders or middle men," he said.

They also said they have submitted a petition to the agriculture business development department and the collector earlier regarding these issues.