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Andhra Pradesh, which had faced a severe shortfall in grain storage capacity last procurement season, is going to have an additional storage capacity of 25 lakh tonnes.
Mr N Kiran Kumar Reddy, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, has asked the Union Government to provide financial assistance to set up 1,000 godowns in various parts of the State. These godowns would be at the disposal of IKPs (Indira Kranthi Patham women self-help groups).
The State faced shortage of storage capacity forcing farmers to keep good part of their produce in their fields even as a fresh kharif season progressed.
Responding positively to the State’s request, Mr Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Rural Development, said the Centre would look into this proposal. Stating that expansion of infrastructure was very important in the leftwing dominated areas, the Minister said he would earmark Rs 10 crore from his MPLADS (Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) funds for building storage capacity. “I would like to spend this amount in Adilabad and Khammam districts,” he said.
Incidentally, these two districts were in the list of 60 districts identified by the Centre as leftwing extremist (LWE) affected districts.
Mr Jairam Ramesh, who reviewed various rural development programmes in the State on Saturday, said that Andhra Pradesh stood first among all States with an allocation of Rs 11,000 crore.
NREGA
Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy said the State had issued 1.22 crore job cards under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGS) in 1,098 mandals. Total expenditure incurred so far was Rs 16,585 crore, including wage expenditure is Rs 12,414 crore and material component of Rs 3,363 crore.
Use of information technology in key components of NREGS such as fund management and muster rolls yielded good results. Social audit too helped identify pilferages.
“Social audit in Andhra Pradesh helped identify pilferages up to Rs 100 crore. Of this, the officials could recover Rs 20 crore,” Mr Jairam Ramesh said, highlighting the need for scrutiny of funds deployed under the flagship scheme with a whopping budget of Rs 40,000 crore.
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