CURRENT SEASON TARGETS Paddy procured 12pc but rice 42pc, JS told

The government has procured 12 per cent of the paddy in two months targeted for the current boro season as the collection will end in August while the boiled rice collection is 42 per cent of the target during the same period.
Responding to a question from treasury bench lawmaker Abul Kalam Md Ahasanul Hoque Chowdhury, food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder disclosed the information in the Jatiya Sangsad, saying that the government started the procurement in April.
He said that the government had primarily decided to purchase 1.5 lakh tonnes of paddy in this boro season but later revised the target to be 2.5 lakh tonnes more.
Considering the bumper production of the crop, he said, the government has a plan to collect paddy directly from the farmers in future, though it has no such plan for rice.
Replaying to a starred question placed by Jatiya Party lawmaker Salma Islam, the food minister also said that the construction of 162 warehouses having the capacity of 1.05 lakh tonnes of food grains is underway as part of increasing the storage capacity of food grains.
He further said that the construction of eight steel silos with the capacity of 5.18 tonnes, too, continued under a modern food grain storage project.
Besides, he said, the government has planned to take a new project to build 200 silos with the capacity of 5,000 tonnes each across the country to store paddy collected from marginal farmers in helping them to get fair price for the crop.
In response to a question from ruling party lawmaker Nasimul Alam Chowdhury, state minister for disaster management and relief Md Enamur Rahman told parliament that the government had planned to construct 152 new cyclone shelters in the country’s coastal and cyclone-prone areas.
‘On April 24, 2008, the planning commission instructed the disaster management and relief ministry to build 1,072 cyclone shelters in the country,’ he said.
Enamur further said that the government had already constructed 100 multipurpose cyclone shelters in the coastal and cyclone-prone areas in the first phase.
He informed the House that 220 more such shelters were being built in the second phase.
His ministry has also a plan to build 752 more multipurpose cyclone shelters in the next phases, Enamur added.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net