Widespread rains trigger fear among farmers

MULTAN: Widespread rains that lashed several parts of south Punjab’s wheat growing areas has triggered fear among the farmers.

The Kissan Committee office-bearers said: “Rains are not good at this stage and it will certainly affect the yield of the wheat crop.”

They claimed that rains and hailstorms had damaged standing crops in several parts of south Punjab. They pointed out that high-velocity winds could flatten the wheat crop and adversely impact the yield.

A senior official of the Punjab Agriculture Department said that the current spell of rains could largely damage harvested wheat crop. He added that if the rains were not accompanied by high-velocity winds, then there was no need to worry, Agriculture Information senior official Naveed Asmat Kahloon said.

District Food Controller Javed Warraich said that the district had so far procured 55pc wheat in the division. He said that total 533,274.6 metric ton wheat had been procured out of the total procurement target in all the four districts of the division. He said that Multan district had procured 58.151pc followed by Lodhran 82.414pc, Vehari 28.556pc and Khanewal 40.19pc. Total 5,631 farmers were accommodated in Multan district followed by 3,133 in Lodhran, 3,228 in Vehari and 5,294 in Khanewal, he added. He said that the total number of 5,332,746 (72.6pc) bardana is issued to the farmers in Multan till Monday.

The Punjab Information Technology Board had developed a centralised system based on an android application to verify and record data of farmers from whom wheat was purchased by the government, said the Food Department officials. The data of each farmer was recorded through the application at the procurement centre, they said, adding that the centralised system provided real-time reports of the wheat procurement process from each centre. The application had an inbuilt feedback system that sent SMS and made automated calls to the farmers to gather their feedback on the procurement process, they added.

The officials said that the centralised system enabled real-time monitoring, improved transparency and accountability in the wheat procurement process.

The administration had established 48 wheat procurement centres in Multan, Lodhran, Khanewal and Vehari. Each wheat procurement centre was authorised to release 500 bags to each grower, they added.

The officials said that wheat bag quota could be increased according to the demand and all four districts would have to procure 2,184,185 wheat bags from the growers.

The government had removed the condition of producing Girdawari record before selling wheat, they added. The Food Department was procuring wheat at Rs 1,400 per 40 kilogram from the farmers, the officials added.