LUDHIANA, April 23: A high-powered Central team led by Food Corporation of India managing director Saritaj Dass, which toured the grain markets of this district on Wednesday, while expressing satisfaction over wheat procurement in the state, has pointed out infrastructural inadequacies in mandis.Mrs Dass was accompanied by K.M. Sahni, joint secretary in the Ministry of Food, FCI (north) zonal manager Alok Sinha, senior regional manager Sarvesh Kaushal, secretary Tejinder Kaur and Rakesh Singh, director of the Punjab Food and Civil Supplies Department.Talking to mediapersons, an FCI spokesperson said that the manual and mechanical cleaners to be installed by arhtiyas and the Punjab Mandi Board were either inadequate or not efficiently run.A mechanical cleaner put up by the Mandi Board in Khanna, the biggest grain market in Asia, was found inoperative and a blank logbook of the unit was produced before the Central team.Dass asked the officials accompanying her to take stern action against erring arhtiyas and procurement officials who were not following instructions to ensure cleanliness and quality of foodgrains during the procurement operation.S A S NAGAR: The government will purchase wheat in bulk to contain price escalation during the peak sowing season, Punjab Food and Supply Minister Madan Mohan Mittal has said.He said the government has so far made a record procurement of 11.39 lakh tonnes through 22,000 purchase centres, whereas last year till April 21 procuring agencies had managed to procure only 88,000 tonnes.When his attention was drawn towards the wheat glut in several mandis, Mittal said that concerted efforts were being made for the purchase of wheat soon after arrival in mandis, besides ensuring payment to farmers within 72 hours.CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Agro Industries Corporation Ltd (PAIC), which has been assigned five districts of Patiala, Sangrur, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar for procuring wheat, has so far purchased one lakh tonnes of wheat in the 80 purchase centres it has opened.According to managing director A R Talwar, all these centres would remain open on Sundays also to make purchases.A press release issued by the Food and Supplies Department stated that the Central team has expressed concern that wheat stocks in the state's mandis were not cleaned properly.Senior officers have been asked to conduct five per cent sample checking of arrivals in Sirhind and Khanna mandis after which strict disciplinary actions would be taken against the erring officials and commission agents.The central team also called on Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal who advised maximum evacuation of raw and parboiled rice from Punjab to other parts of the country so that custom milling of the remaining paddy is completed before the onset of monsoon.FATEHGARH SAHIB:The Punjab farmers are allegedly being duped to the tune of Rs 7 crore a year by the procurement agencies by bungling in gunny bags used for grain storage.According to sources, the procurement agencies calculate the weight of an empty bag as one kilogram whereas the average bag weights around 800 gram only. Thus every filled bag causes a loss of about 200 gram to the farmers.The Senior Regional Manager of the FCI Sarvesh Kaushal, while talking to the ens at Sirhind, partly admitted this fact by stating that the approximate weight of an empty gunny bag is below specification.At the same time, he added that moisture could be behind the loss of weight of empty gunny bags.Interestingly, during the checking of wheat purchase operation sat Sirhind Mandi, the officials lashed out at the officials of the procurement agencies over the purchases made by them below specifications.Many senior officers of the procurement agencies, including the district manager PUNSUP, technical officer of FCI, Secretary of Mandi Board and senior officials of the MARKFED were absent from the mandi when the central team visited it.
