Clear pending payment of farmers by April 30: CM to food supplies dept

BATHINDA: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday ordered the food and civil supplies department to “positively” clear pending payments of farmers by the end of this month. He directed heads of all procurement agencies to ensure prompt lifting of wheat procured so far in mandis across Punjab.
In a statement after chairing a meeting of all heads of procurement agencies through video conferencing, the chief minister said there were initial glitches caused by introduction of DBT system and shortage of gunny bags, but the situation had improved considerably, leading to payment of nearly Rs 10,000 crore through DBT directly into the bank accounts of 5.59 lakh farmers.
He asked Mandi Board officials to complete uploading of farmers’ details on AnaajKharid portal to ensure timely payment. The balance payment of nearly Rs 2,900 crore would be made once these requisite formalities were completed, he said.
Amarinder said 86.74 LMT wheat had arrived in mandis so far and 84.18 LMT had been procured while the remaining wheat would be procured immediately so that no farmer had to stay at the mandi unnecessarily. So far, only 45% of procured wheat has been lifted from mandis. Out of the 84 LMT procured so far, 38 LMT has been lifted.
The CM asked procurement agencies to lift the remaining 46 LMT of wheat already stacked in mandis, forthwith.
Meanwhile, additional chief secretary, development Anirudh Tiwari said Punjab Mandi Board had set up “farmers help desks” in grain markets across the state, where IT professionals along with board officials were assisting farmers in registration on the new portal to ensure timely payment directly into their bank accounts under the DBT scheme. He also informed that the food and civil supplies department earlier transferred payments into the bank accounts of nearly 22,000 arhtiyas (commission agents) for making further payments to farmers.
However, from the current procurement season, with the introduction of the DBT scheme, payments are now being directly transferred by procurement agencies into farmers’ bank accounts.
In view of the recent surge of Covid cases, the state government has set up Covid vaccination camps in all 154 market committees across the state to inoculate people above the age of 45 years visiting grain markets.
On the issue of lifting, principal secretary, food and civil supplies, K A P Sinha said that 16.84 crore gunny bags had been used for packaging of wheat and sufficient bags were being supplied to all grain markets across the state.