Pocharam to lead all party team

Minister says that the govt is serious about stopping farmer suicides

Hyderabad: The Agriculture Minister, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, has agreed to lead all-party delegation to Delhi for seeking Central government’s guidance and help over the issues of crop insurance,

MSP (Minimum Support Price) and on quality of fertilisers and pesticides being supplied to farmers and prices.

While replying to the debate in Legislative Council, the Minister assured that the government was serious in checking farmers’ suicides and tackling the agrarian crisis.

Hence it has decided not only filling up the vacant positions of Agriculture Extension Officers, but also would be issuing notification for filling up another 1,000 posts.

Besides this, each Assembly constituency would be provided with an ‘Agronomist’, who would be a graduate in Agriculture.He informed that 36 divisions of Animal Husbandry, similar to 108 services will be operating with a toll free number will cover all the villages from October 2.

While on the other hand, the Minister would be chairing a meeting with representatives of various seed companies for ensuring some kind of agreement is reached towards helping farmers.

Following the Congress party members suggestion to enforce moratorium on money lenders who had provided loans to farmers for at least 2 years, he assured that this would be controlled after analysing the feasibility.

He had recently held meeting with the bankers and ensured that the government would seek relaxation to farmers who had submitted their bank passbooks for its return for ‘renewal’. This would cut rep tapism, in claiming the loan waiver and other benefits.