JEYPORE: Even as the farmers of Koraput are finding it tough task to get tokens for selling their paddy in mandis, lack of information about exact quantity of paddy to be procured by the Government agencies has put them in a quandary. The district administration has been running paddy mandis in 91 places for the past one month and the procurement is conducted thorough LAMPS.
As per the norms, the LAMPS send the farmers’ request for P-PAS to Bhubaneswar every 15 days and the later generates tokens by scheduling paddy sale in their areas where the mandis are available.
The tokens are generated every fortnight giving permission to farmers to sell the crop with maximum ceiling of 100 quintal at a mandi in one token.
Though the small farmers face no problem in this regard, the big farmers interested to sell more then 100 quintal face tough time as the online system does not give details about the exact quantity to be sold in the mandi. The Lamps staff expressed their helplessness in this regard. “We cannot give the information about total paddy sale limits as it is not available in online procurement data,” admitted Kaliprasad, a data operator.
Sources said the procurement agencies procure only 19 quintal per acre in irrigated areas and 13 quintal in non-irrigated areas. District civil supply office sources said the new system has been made at the Government level and they cannot do anything in this regard. Meanwhile, some irate farmers of Kundra block staged a demonstration before the LAMP officials to press their demand.
