Madurai:The procurement of paddy from farmers through e-registration is not serving its purpose as the process is getting prolonged and farmers are incurring the same expenditure as they would if they sell it to private players.
Madurai district president of Tamil Nadu Farmers Association, S P Elangovan, said that now they had to register online and take the certificate to the village administrative officer who had to verify and certify it before they go to the centres. This process would take about three days, provided the server functions, the VAO is present in his office on the date, and the person at the procurement centre is also on time. “But that is rare as even if we register, getting the VAO’s certification and then finding the employees at the procurement centre in their seats is a difficult task,’’ he said.
Farmers say they incur huge expenses in the procurement process. They handover paddy in bags of 40 kg each, known as `sippam’. As the gunny bag itself weighs about 200 grams, they have to give the centre 40.20 kg per sippam, but the employees at the centres weigh it for 41.20 kg citing wastage. They also remove a bucketful of paddy or a sippam for every 100 sippams supplied to the centres. ja, a farmer, says that at last week’s grievance meet, they had told district collector Dr S Aneesh Sekhar about the Rs 60 per bag being demanded from them. The collector said it would not be collected, “but, they demand it when we go there,’’ he said.
Madurai district alone has about 27 direct paddy procurement centres run by Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation and about 23 under the cooperative societies. The process in the cooperative societies is even more difficult, because society staff have to take the paddy for quality certification from the joint director of cooperative societies, before it is procured. Similarly, in cooperative societies the money is handed over to them, who in turn give it to the farmers. It takes about a month for the money to reach the farmers.
S Chidambaran of Alanganallur says it would be better if all the procurement centres are brought under TNCSC. The farmers are responsible for the paddy even if it is brought to the procurement centre, till it is procured. When the process gets delayed, the paddy starts sprouting. They have to pay Rs 1,500 for transport of the paddy bags to the procurement centre and about Rs 600 to loadsman to load and download the bags.
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