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| CAG point finger towards poor working of agri production dept | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, April 3: The annual CAG report for the period ended on March 2010 has expressed dissatisfaction with the Agriculture production department as it failed to register growth despite spending huge sums of money.
Scrutiny of records of the Agronomist, Jammu the authority to implement the activity, revealed that entire release of Rs 2.07 crore during 2005-2010 were spent on purchase of seeds, which was sufficient for coverage of 5182 hectare of land.It was however, seen that coverage of 2,869 hectare of land only had been achieved during the period.
As per the guidelines, assistance of 1.15 crore only was required to cover this area.The records for the remaining seed issued by SDAO's to the farmers costing 0.93 crore were not provided. The possibility of misuse of funds cannot be ruled out, the CAG report has revealed.
It further says, Verification of the data of 1053 beneficiaries issued with vegetable seeds,provided by the CAO's, Jammu and Kathua, showed that the cost of seeds issued to beneficiaries was in the range of Rs 330 to Rs 4125 per hectare. This showed that the average rate of issue of seed of Rs 4000 as fixed by GoI was sufficient to meet the requirement of the beneficiaries.
The Director, Kashmir issued seed, organic manure and chemical fertilisers at the fixed cost of Rs 6000, Rs 5000 and Rs 2000 per hectare respectively to the farmers in the province thereby incurring an irregular expenditure of Rs 1.47 crore.
The CAG report said, had the department adhered to the programme guidelines in letter and spirit, it could have covered 4976 ha of land under vegetable n Kashmir province alone against the 1290 ha actually during 2005-10.
Records of Agronomist,(vegetables)Jammu and three CAO's showed that 162.84 quintal of various varieties of seed valued at Rs 42 lakh had been procured and distributed to the farmers much after the sowing periods during 2006-10.This indicated that the department had not kept the timing of sowing of vegetables in view while procuring the seeds.
The Agronomist Vegetables Jammu stated that the sowing period of vegetable crops varies from plains to hilly areas of all the districts of the division.
The reply should be viewed in the light of the fact that the department had issued eight varieties of seed valued at 29.12 lakh to the farmers after one month to five months of the actual sowing periods which could be used only if the next season much after the expiry to the shelf life of six months fixed for sowing of the seed by Agronomist.
Commenting on the performance of nurseries the CAG report has clearly stated that the total annual production of 65 nurseries varied from 22 to 34 percent.Since the expansion of area through new plantation depended upon the availability of quality plant material, due to poor performance of departmental nurseries the department failed to meet the requirement of growers and was forced to purchase plants from the open market.
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