Nellore: Civil supplies department not paying milling charges

Nellore: While paddy growers are blaming rice millers for anomalies in the collection of harvested paddy, millers have been passing on the buck to the civil supplies department citing unreasonable conditions imposed on them.

They allege that the department is not paying milling charges after supplying rice from a longtime. Moreover they are losing Rs 24,000 for every 270 quintals of paddy (a wagon load) being supplied to them.

This is because of 3 per cent difference between the rate being offered by civil supplies and actual realisation of  paddy after converting as rice. While the benchmark for the department is 67 per cent realisation rice millers argue that the tangible output is only 62 to 64 per cent.

Referring to department stance that millers are compensated through other items such as brokens, rice bran, small brokens and husk after milling the paddy, the millers maintain that still they lose 2 percent while pointing to foreign matter in the paddy.

“We have to bear the cost of transportation of paddy from collection point to rice mill from 0 to 8 km. The civil supplies department makes payment at the rate of 0.32 paise as transport charge if the distance is above 8 km and it is not even 25 per cent of the amount we are spending. Moreover transport charges also not paid regularly citing sanction issues,” a rice miller and president of rice millers and dealers association, Nagireddy Subhramanyam Reddy said.  

Reacting to an allegation that millers are not supplying gunny bags to the farmers to supply paddy, he said they are buying them for Rs 25 each where as the government pays only Rs 14.66 per bag.

He said there are many instances where farmers take gunny bags under the pretext of supplying paddy but never turn up.

When asked about some miller’s failure to offer bank guarantees (BGs) to procure paddy, he said the bank charges including legal opinion and engineer estimation cost anywhere between Rs 3 to Rs 3.50 lakhs to obtain BG of Rs 1 crore but the expenditure is no match to the meager income.

He has also alleged that paddy purchase centres are ill equipped to assess the quality of rice and moisture levels. We have been appealing the government from years to ensure sufficient number of godowns, yard and trained technical personnel at paddy purchase centres, but in vain.

He said that service charges are not being paid since several years and the outstanding to the millers is to the extent of Rs 2.50 crore. Responding to miller’s failure to pay Rs 50 crore towards paddy supplied to them for custom milling during 2011-12, he said that their association forced some of them to pay and insisting others also to fall in line.