Special drive to enrol 5.9L people

Amaravati: The State government will be conducting special drive to reach 100 per cent enrolment under Smart Pulse Survey. Chief Secretary Dinesh Kumar directed officials to conduct the special drive till September 15 for enrolment of remaining 5.90 lakh people who were not enrolled in Smart Pulse Survey in all districts.

In a review meeting at Secretariat on Wednesday, the Chief Secretary said 4.34 crore people of total 4.94 crore had already been enrolled under the survey.

Around 54 lakh people were not included for various reasons such as migration to other states, non-availability of Aadhaar numbers and some people were not interested in enrolling, he said. The remaining 5.90 lakh people must be enrolled under survey.

He suggested district collectors to take steps for creating awareness among people on the survey. “The survey has to be completed as early as possible in view of complaints that the smart pulse survey data is not available for some purposes,” he said.

Chief Commissioner of Land Administration (CCLA) Anil Chandra Punit said measures would be taken to set up enrolment centres at all mandal headquarters, municipalities and municipal corporations.

In another review with Horticulture department officials, the Chief Secretary suggested officials to take steps for creating export facilities for horticulture crops. “Horticulture department should not confine only to focus on increasing of produce but has to concentrate more on creating marketing and export facilities,” he added.

He also directed the officials to focus on establishing food processing units, implementation of post-harvesting techniques and quality labs for crop grading.

Dinesh Kumar also suggested to arrange vermi compost at Rythu bazaars as around 40 per cent of food products were being wasted. “Surplus vegetables at Rythu bazaars have to be collected from farmers and should be used to prepare vermi compost,” he suggested.

Commissioner of Horticulture Chiranjeevi Chowdary said integrated market yards would be set up in Railway Koduru in Kadapa district and Rajamahendravaram in East Godavari within three months. He also said efforts were being made to arrange modern cold storage units as the existing ones were not fulfil the needs of farmers.

There was demand for cold storage units as 233 lakh metric tonnes of crop had been produced in 15.82 lakh hectares in 2016-17, he said.