AICC secretary Dasoju Shravan today demanded the chief minister of the state KCR to take steps for extending help to the farmers of the state amid the ongoing lockdown in Telangana. He said that the farmers were facing so many problems due to the ongoing lockdown.
He said that the delay in setting up of full scale procurement Centers were costing a lot to the farmers is the state. Stating that the the paddy crop is cultivated in 2.8 lakh acres of land in undivided Nalgonda district under Ngarjunasagar leer canal and one lakh acres under AMRP canal , he alleged that the state government had not procured any kind of paddy from the region so far. He told the CM the rice millers from Miryalaguda area had already paddy grown in 3 lakh acres till now. He said that this once incident was evident to state that the state government need to ramp up paddy procurement. At a much higher level to fulfill the paddy procurement promise made by the CM.
He alleged that the farmers were forced to sell their produce to private millers at lesser prices in the absence of the government’s paddy procurement centers. He also alleged that the government officials were procuring only thick rice and not the fine varieties of rice at the procurement Centers. Talking about gunny bag shortage in the state, he said that although the government announced that it would need 20 crore gunny bags during the procurement season this year, there was severe shortage of the gunny bags in the state. He said that the paddy harvest was damaged at several places due to shortage of the bags.
He also asked the CM to step up the procurement of maize and added that only 1.3 lakh tonnes of maize as against the estimated 18,6 lakh metric tonnes was procured so far due to lack of adequate number of procurement centers.