Farmers have lost a valuable season in using farm equipment due to the inability of the authorities and personnel at e-Seva centres to use the technology properly.
According to sources in the Agriculture Department, so far about 200 applications were uploaded by farmers seeking subsidised equipment in farming activity. The condition of allowing applications only online and undue delay in finalising subsidy for various equipment pushed the farmers to the corner without any escape. Till a week ago the farmers were asked to pay the entire amount of the equipment if the subsidy was more than Rs. 30,000 stating that the entire amount would be credited to farmers account once the subsidy was released. This also stopped many farmers from coming forward to use the equipment.
“At many places e-Seva operators are not cooperating with farmers. They are busy with filing various applications of different government schemes and farmers were forced to wait for hours together. On the other hand, there are some technical problems in uploading the applications. You have to begin all over again if the application was not uploaded at single stretch, which takes long time,” said an officer in the department.
“Farmers are approaching us for the equipment but we are not in a position to dispose them off immediately as sufficient number of equipment is not available. The process is also cumbersome,” said a dealer on condition of anonymity.
Out of the total Rs. 22 crore released for the district for use of farm equipment only Rs. 5 crore worth equipment was handed over to farmers so far. The department has to hand over another Rs. 17 crore worth of instruments to farmers.
“It was decided to accept off-line applications from farmers as well in addition to online after realising the problems. We are also ensuring that mandal level agriculture officers assist farmers in filing the applications online,” said B. Hukya Naik, Joint Director, Agriculture.
