NEW YEAR GREETINGS

CHAITI 2010

RAIDS ON RICE MILLS

Enforcement activity from civil supplies side is in full swing in Rayagada with the administration conducting raids on rice millers with active support of district police. Raids were conducted in Rayagada, Gunupur and Muniguda on more than 10 rice mills. A good amount of rice meant for PDS was siezed. In one mill itself more than 5000 bags were siezed. Prima facie it was revealed that subsidised rice from not only Rayagada, but also from neighbouring district of Koraput ( narayanpatna, Bamdhugaon and Laxmipur) and from Andhra Pradesh is smuggled and dispatched from Rayagada, which acts as a hub for interstate blackmarketing of PDS. Rice bags from the supplies dept of Haryana were found in one mill, which indicates of an interstate network. Cases are being booked under EC act and the district administration has promised stringent action against the offenders. The raids come at a time when paddy procurement is to begin. This encforcement drive will surely help to curb the malpractices in the procurement system and help achieve the goal of providing the farmers their rightful entitlement in form of MSP and break the cycle of piferage of essential commidities. 


WORLD FOOD PROGRAM TEAM EVALUATES BIOMETRIC BASED TPDS

World food programme team arrived in Rayagada for the evaluation of the Biometric based Targeted PDS program in this district. The team consisted of Mr. Iqbal Subhan form Bangladesh, Ms. Bhatia and Ms. Pradnya Paithankar from WFP offices from Bangkok and Delhi respectively. The team after discussing with the BDOs and officers of Civil supplies dept, the team visited some Fair price shops where the rations to see how the ration is issued in the Biometric based TPDS. This Biometric based TPDS system has eliminated more than 20000 bogus/ ghost cards and this move itself has brought a saving of Rs. 3.5 crore per month in Rayagada district alone. This has shout the mouth of all distractors of this program, who have been constantly harping on the glitches in the program, like data errors and exclusion of some genuine people. This aspect was explained to the WFP evaluation team and also that efforts are being taken cover the left out population. Another important aspect of this program is that Rayagada is the only district in the state in which 2002 BPL list is followed for Biometric enumeration.
The WFP team then visited the Kumtilpeta Gram panchayat area where, as in other rural parts of the district, PDS is issued to the people with bar coded coupons. All biometric data of the rural population is collected and bar coded cards have been provided to them.

APARTMENT CULTURE COMES TO RAYAGADA

Rayagada is one of the fastest growing urban centre in southern Orissa. Population has almost doubled from 57000, what it was as per 2001 census. With boom in industrialisation by the way of upcoming mega projects such as Utkal Alumina, Aditya alumina, RSB Metaliks and number of ancillary industries, coupled with the availability of good rail and road communication facilities, there has been influx of people from all around. There are already four Engineering Colleges and one medical college is in the offing. It is because of this that there has been increasing demand for housing in this town. Since there has been a chronic shortage of leasable land, there is no alternative but raising apartments to meet this housing demand. Of late no of apartments have been raised and more are to come. This booming urbanisation is bound to put lot os stress ob the civic amenties for which the Urban Local Bodies need to gear up.alreday Municipality has undertaken widening of internal roads keeping in view the congestion that is seen now and will only increase in the future.


RICE PROCUREMENT MEETING HELD

RICE PROCUREMENT MEETING HELD
Though not a mojor procurement district, Rayagada district has a good produce of rice, particularly in the plain valley tracts of Rayagada, Gunupur and Padampur areas. Hence procurement is an important activity and to streamline the years procurement a meeting was held on 19.11.2010 under the chairmanship of Collector Rayagada and was attended by sub collector-cum-chairman Regulated Marketing Committee of Rayagada and Gunupur and officials of RMCs and civil supplies dept. Farmers and Pani panchayat representatives also attended the meeting. The procurement process, it was decided , should be such that a farmer should not be required to travel more than 10 kms for selling his produce. However considering the geography of districts like Rayagada it is not laways possible to follow the norms. However the administration is commited to minimise the distance between the farmer and the mandi and it is out of this vision that two mor eprocurement centres are to be set up in Chandrapur and Padampur blocks. Aslo all efforts are being mad e to check the exploitation from the middle men. The drails of procurement plan are as follows. 


COTTON PROCUREMENT IN RAYAGADA

COTTON PROCUREMENT STARTED IN RAYAGADA
Rayagada is one of the very few districts in Orissa which has a good produce of cotton. Gunupur sub division of Rayagada is the major cotton growing area of this district. There have been lot of issues relating to cotton procurement in the prwvious years, but all sorts of measures were taken to ensure that the cultivator gets the Minimun support price. Cotton corporation of India is the procuring agency from the government side, besides a number of private licence holders are also allowed to procure cotton from the RMC mandis. The major issue rhis year is that the CCI wil procuring the cotton not at the MSP, but at the prevailing market rate determibed by the mumbau head office. To safe guard the interest of the farmers the district administration has instructed the RMCs to test check 20 % of the cotton growing farmers, whther they have got the right price for their produce and to ensure that there is no distress sale to private parties. Also they have been instructed to videograph atleast one hour of procurement transactions at different times of the day to ensure transperancy in the procurement process. 
This year owing to the cyclonic rain in the month of october and november there has been a crop loss of about 25%. This is likely to hit the farmers.