Telangana: FCI fails to make storage space, loss mounts as rice rots
The civil supplies commissioner on Wednesday held a meeting with FCI officials and millers to find a solution.
Hyderabad: The state is facing an acute shortage of godown space to store foodgrains this year.
Food Corporation of India has failed to provide adequate storage space to the state even after repeated requests from the government.
This year, the TS government procured the highest ever 37 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from farmers, of which it has to hand over 26 lakh metric tonnes to the FCI, but it has no space to store the crop.
The state government is upset with the FCI for not clearing earlier stocks from the godowns due to which the state is facing losses on account of delay in transportation and unloading of stocks at godowns besides damage caused to the grains due to the recent rains.
Civil supplies Commissioner C.V. Anand said though rice millers are ready to send customised milling rice meant for the public distribution system, the government is not in a position to transport and store it as FCI had failed to provide storage space.
“This year, the civil supplies corporation purchased 37.15 lakh tonnes of paddy in kharif and sent it for milling. Of this, the millers have to hand over 26 lakh metric tonnes of rice to government meant for the PDS by August 31. Millers have handed over 8.76 lakh MTs boiled rice and 0.44 lakh MTs of raw rice to the FCI. Rice stocks are lying with them since there is no storage space in godowns,” Mr Anand said.
The civil supplies commissioner on Wednesday held a meeting with FCI officials and millers to find a solution.
Millers brought to his notice that hundreds of lorries were waiting at FCI godowns for days together for stocks to be unloaded and expressed concern over the rice getting damaged due to the recent rains.
They requested the government to extend the deadline to hand over PDS rice by a month as FCI has no storage space.
Mr Anand said that Peddapalli, Nizamabad, Nalgonda districts etc were facing severe space shortage problem and urged the FCI officials to provide storage space at the earliest.