Paddy procurement starts amid hiccups

ROURKELA: Amid reports of continuing distress sale of paddy, the officials of the Civil Supplies wing of the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare (FS&CW) department have made a mess of the paddy procurement process in the tribal-dominated Sundargarh district. As scheduled, the procurement process was kicked off in the district on Friday and the inaugural day ended up haphazardly.

Blame it on whimsical action of the Civil Supplies Officer (CSO) who kept all the Paddy Procurement Centres (PPCs) guessing about their targets till the end and at about 11.10 pm on Thursday sent emails instructing them to start procurement from Friday morning. Sources said less than 20 of 116 PPCs could run on Friday and procured about 5,000 quintals.

Reliable sources at the PPCs said SAS (Society Authority Slip) is issued to a PPC authorising it to buy paddy with prescribed target and also informs to which rice mill it is tagged. Similarly, an authorised rice mill is given MAS (Miller Authority Slip) prescribing the rice mill about the quantity of paddy it would purchase from the respective PPCs it is tagged.

The sources said SASs were received through emails late Thursday night and from Friday early morning, block to sub-division level officers pressurised Managing Directors of LAMPSs (Large Area Multi-Purpose Cooperative Societies) over phone to start procurement anyhow. It would take four to five days to streamline the process.

Bonai Krishak Sangh president Dambarudhar Kishan complained that paddy procurement gets delayed by a month in the district and scant regard is paid to the exploitation of the distressed small and marginal farmers who are selling paddy for Rs 900 to Rs 1,200 at village weekly markets. He said procurement schedule was finalised on November 21 and wondered what led the CSO office to send SASs at the dead of the night on Thursday. He said it is a ‘deliberate’ action of the unscrupulous officials to create a mess and allow time to middlemen to benefit.

A couple of Managing Directors of LAMPSs confided to this correspondent that each LAMPS has two to three PPCs which are deliberately given very low purchase targets in the first phase. The target is enhanced in next phase. Sundargarh CSO A Barik could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.
In the first phase, the district targets to procure 88,000 tonnes of rice (equivalent to 1.30 lakh tonnes of paddy) through 14 rice mills.