HYDERABAD: The Agriculture department has constituted six special teams to conduct surprise checks at the Agricultural Market Committees across the state.
The teams, working under the supervision of the Director of Agricultural Marketing, will carry out random inspections at Agricultural Market Committees starting from next week.
According to officials, the inspection teams will undertake field-level assessments of market administration, services being provided to farmers, market management, infrastructure and measures for safeguarding government revenue.
The inspections will focus on key aspects like practical problems faced by farmers while selling their produce, deficiencies and challenges in minimum support price (MSP) procurement operations, factors forcing farmers into distress sales of their produce, measures required to prevent evasion of market cess, administration, infrastructure and service delivery in Agricultural Market Committees, whether farmers are receiving remunerative prices for their produce and whether the auction process is being conducted transparently, functioning of MSP procurement centres, problems faced by farmers during procurement and whether payments are being made on time and implementation of digital services, maintenance of records and adherence to government guidelines by market committees, they added.
The special teams are required to submit their inspection reports to the government every week.
The reports will include deficiencies identified during inspections, issues that require immediate action, policy reforms and recommendations to further strengthen the agricultural marketing system.
Based on these reports, Agriculture Minister Thummala Nageswara Rao, along with the principal secretary of Agriculture & Cooperation department, will hold a high-level review meeting next week.
The minister, meanwhile, said that the primary objective of the special inspections is to ensure remunerative prices for farmers, better market facilities, transparent transactions and protection of government revenue, adding that responsible and accountable governance remains the government’s foremost priority.