HYDERABAD: Agriculture Minister Thummala Nageswara Rao on Friday directed officials to immediately set up additional urea sales counters at Rythu Vedikas.
The minister said that the government initiated special measures to ensure that fertilisers were easily accessible to farmers. “As the distribution system, already introduced in some places on an experimental basis, has yielded good results, it has been decided to expand the arrangement by establishing additional urea sales counters at Rythu Vedikas across the state,” he said.
He also appealed to farmers to purchase urea only as per their requirements and not to stock up in large quantities. The minister said that in areas where there were only one or two PACS per mandal, farmers should be served using Rythu Vedikas.
Stating that farmers were facing urea shortage during the ongoing Kharif season, he said that the state government has requested the Centre to supply two lakh tonnes within the next 20 days. “The Centre responded immediately and agreed to allocate the required quantity to Telangana through four import vessels arriving at various ports along the eastern coast,” he said.
“The Centre also agreed to allocate an additional 30,000 tonnes of urea from domestic production units to Telangana, in view of the operations coming to a halt at the Ramagundam RFCL plant. We have also requested the Centre to immediately resume production at Ramagundam plant. The unit would resume operations within three to four days,” he added.
TG receives 11K tonnes of urea
On Friday, 11,181 tonnes of urea reached the railway rake points at Karimnagar, Miryalaguda, Warangal and Peddapalli through GSFC, IPL, CIL-Karaikal and CIL-Kakinada companies. On Saturday, 9,039 tonnes would arrive at Warangal, Sanathnagar and Karimnagar railway rake points from MFL, KRIBHCO and CIL-Krishnapatnam, the minister said.
He further said that in the first four days of September, 28,000 metric tonnes of urea was supplied to the state. “So far, 8,20,112 metric tonnes of urea have been sold in the state, compared with only 7,75,157 metric tonnes during the same period last year,” he added.