Paddy procurement begins today,state still short of storage houses

“Punjab is fully equipped with machinery and human resource to ensure hassle-free procurement and timely payment to paddy growers,” Punjab food and civil supplies secretary D S Grewal said.

He said all the procuring agencies have been directed to make all necessary arrangements of linking the proposed purchase mandis with the storage point centres in such a way so as to incur bare minimum expenditure on transportation.

Incidentally,Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had been blaming the Centre for not building enough storage houses in the state. However,Jaswinder Singh Baliawal,the state president of Shiromani Akali Dal (Delhi) claimed that Centre had decided in 2008 to build grain storage godowns under-Public Private Partnership to be managed by the state under minimum guaranteed lease of 5 + 5 years. The state government gave this responsibility to the Punjab Grains Procurement Corporation Ltd (Pungrain),but nothing has been worked out till date.

“Tenders were invited a number of times. Ironically,while in 2009,tenders for 90 sites with 88 lakh tonne capacity was invited,the figure came down to 63 sites in another tender invited in July 2010. The latest tenders,invited in April 2011,are for 24 sites only with 7.56 lakh tonne capacity,” Baliawal said,adding that Centre had also planned a project to computerise the records of godowns.

“It was a Centre sponsored project announced in the budget for nine states,including Punjab. However, the state has not taken an y action in this regard,” he added.

Sources in the food supply department said that the rental rates announced by the Centre to pay to the contractors for the godowns are not viable. Because of no response from the contractors,the number of sites were being reduced every year. Some 12 applicants have showed interest but no work has been allotted as of now.

Meanwhile,the government has fixed the minimum support price of Grade ‘A’ paddy at Rs 1,110 per quintal and Rs 1,080 per quintal for common variety.

The highlight during this paddy lifting season will be the decision of FCI to make direct payment to farmers in Punjab and Haryana,shelving its earlier practice of paying farmers through commission agents.

However,the coordination committee of Punjab’s four state procurement agencies – Markfed,Punsup,Punjab Agro and Punjab Warehousing Corporation — have given a call for boycott of procurement operations from Day 1. This will leave just two agencies,central agency Food Corporation of India,and Punjab Food and Civil Supplies Department (Pungrain) in the mandis.

“The government has not implemented the decision reached with us on weight gain in wheat despite a letter issued by the secretary food in April this year. It has also not resolved the issue of joint custody of paddy by state agencies and rice shellers. Owing to shortage of staff in procurement agencies,the custody of paddy is mostly at the discretion of rice shellers. In case of any shortage or scams,we are penalised. Our third demand is release of retiral benefits to those who have been not paid their dues,” Bhupinder Singh,president of coordination committee of Punjab Foodgrain Agencies said.