Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has directed the officials concerned to ensure that there is no interruption in harvesting of paddy and procurement of commodity from the farmers in spite of the lockdown that is in force across the State.
The ongoing lockdown has brought the life to a standstill, but the government has decided to procure entire produce from farmers to ensure that they did not suffer financially. Steps should be taken to ensure that paddy is procured till the last grain. The government had decided to procure the farmers’ produce from the village-level so as to ensure that there is no overcrowding at the market yards.
The Chief Minister who reviewed the situation with senior officials till late on Sunday evening exhorted the officials concerned to educate farmers on the use of harvesters. At the same time, steps should be taken to provide special passes to those operating the harvesters and the shops selling spares relating to these machines should be allowed to be opened. Permissions should also be given to vehicles deployed to transport paddy from the fields to procurement centres while the villages should allow the machines and their operators along with the vehicles for transporting their produce into their villages, he said.
Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao was particular that the officials concerned should take steps to ensure that there was no overcrowding at the procurement centres. Coupons clearly specifying the date and time of procurement should be distributed among individual farmers so that they come to the procurement centres at the specified time.
The Chief Minister expressed concern over the shortage of gunny bags required to transport paddy. He called Prime Minister Narendra Modi over telephone and explained him about the difficulties faced in gunny bags as majority of factories manufacturing gunny bags were located in West Bengal which was under lockdown.
He told the Prime Minister that the State would require at least 20 crore gunny bags and requested him to allow their transport through special trains. The Prime Minister is understood to have responded positively to the request and assured that he would speak to the departments’ concerned to ensure that gunny bags in required quantities reached the State in time.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister appreciated the Energy department officials, TS-Transco and TS-Genco chairman and Managing Director D. Prabhakar Rao in particular, for his initiative in ensuring that there was no disruptions in power supply in spite of the switching off of lights across the State for nine minutes in line with the call given by the Prime Minister. The Energy department staff worked efficiently and allayed apprehensions about scope for disturbances in power supply due to sudden lowering of the demand.
