Historical steps being taken for farmers’ prosperity, claims Kirmani

LAHORE:Provincial Minister for Agriculture & Livestock Syed Ashiq Hussain Kirmani presided over a meeting at Agriculture House to review the progress on the initiatives approved by Chief Minister for the Agriculture Department.

According to the CM’s vision, historic steps are being taken for the development and prosperity of farmers in the agriculture sector under the Transforming Punjab Agriculture Programme, said Syed Ashiq Hussain Kirmani. He said that historic steps were being taken for the development and prosperity of farmers in the agricultural sector under Transforming Punjab Agriculture Programme.

He said that so far more than 327,000 farmers had submitted online applications for Chief Minister Kissan Card and after scrutiny, more than 130,000 applications had been sent to the Bank of Punjab for approval. The process of registration of dealers of fertilizer, seed and pesticides companies is also going on. So far, 3,000 dealers have registered.

On this occasion, the minister directed that the Kissan Card Project’s timeline should be followed with letter and spirit and the number of requests received from farmers should be monitored on daily basis. The minister inquired about the helpline status and directed all the employees on duty at the call centre of the agriculture department about their responsibilities that the farmers who contacted on helpline, should be informed about the reasons for the rejection of the applications and the minor problems faced by them can be resolved in time.

The provincial minister was told that more than 500 applications have been received so far for the Chief Minister Green Tractor Scheme and four major tractor manufacturing companies have been contacted in this regard. On the occasion, the minister directed to prepare a live dashboard for monitoring of all the schemes under Transforming Punjab Agriculture plan. He also issued orders to make a live portal for the one year recruitment process of 1,000 agricultural graduates. On the occasion, the minister was briefed that 1,000 in the first phase and 1,000 in the second phase agricultural graduates would be recruited under internship programme. He was also briefed that 4,000 super-seeders would be distributed among the farmers. In the meeting, the minister was briefed about the status of the current Kharif crop, various proposals to increase the cultivation of vegetables and pulses in Punjab. He directed to make workable strategies for kitchen gardening, promotion of vegetables and pulses so that fresh and affordable food can be made available to the people as per hygiene norms. On the occasion, Secretary Agriculture, Punjab Iftikhar Ali Sahoo said that the preparation of 1,000 super seeders was in final stages.