THANJAVUR/TIRUVARUR: The state government should act on a war footing to move the paddy bags from Direct Procurement Centres (DPCs) to the godowns so that the paddy kept in open by farmers could be procured by, said AIADMK General secretary and the Leader of the Opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami.
Talking to reporters in Tiruvarur on Wednesday after inspecting the paddy kept in the open by the farmers outside the DPCs in Thanjavur and Tiruvarur districts, he said that the farmers have been complaining to him that the paddy brought by them were not procured at DPCs for several days.
"Due to this, the paddy heaped in the open were damaged due to the rains. As thousands of paddy bags are kept in the DPCs, the officials there could not procure the paddy brought by the farmers. Even the paddy kept in some DPCs were affected due to the rains and the paddy in the bags started sprouting."
Edappadi Palaniswami said. "Who is to bear these losses? It is a loss to the government."
Terming the government as incompetent, the AIADMK leader said that if the production was high, the government should have planned for this and should have been prepared to procure the paddy from the farmers.
He said that as this is the rainy season, farmers could not bring paddy within the moisture norm of 17%. "When AIADMK was in power we procured paddy with 20-22% moisture", he said adding the government should have got relaxation of the moisture norms by now by writing to the Union government.
"The Food Minister in the assembly said the government was yet to get the norms relaxed," Edappadi Palainswami said.
He said the government's priority now should be procurement of paddy from farmers and giving compensation to the farmers whose paddy was damaged due to the rains.
He also urged the government to start enumeration of crop damage due to the recent rains.
He alleged the crops were affected as the DMK government did not desilted the canals properly.
Earlier, Edappadi K Palaniswami interacted with farmers who had kept their paddy in heaps outside the DPCs at Kattur, Murthiyambalpuram in Thanjavur district, Vaduvur, Serumangalam in Tiruvarur district.
He also inspected the standing paddy affected in Sithankudi due to stagnation of rainwater in the paddy field as the drain facility was not there. He is also visiting Nagappattinam too today.
