Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav warned the Karimnagar district revenue administration that indifference towards the prestigious government programme of sheep distribution will not be tolerated.
Mr.Srinivas Yadav who held a video conference with the District Collectors here on Wednesday on the selection of beneficiaries for sheep distribution, conduct of gram sabhas, took a serious note that not even one revenue officer from Karimnagar attended the meeting.
District veterinary officer informed the Minister that Collector Sarfaraz Ahmed had gone for a meeting and Joint Collector was on leave. When he said that even DRO and RDO were not available, Minister was irked and wanted to know if a holiday was declared for the Revenue department.
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Sheep insured
Pointing out that the distribution of sheep would start from June 20 the Minister asked the Collectors to speed up the purchase of sheep and said that the sheep would be insured at the place where they are bought. The government would ensure the insurance of existing sheep was completed before the purchase of new sheep, he added.
Minister said that of the 8,738 gram panchayats, 7,442 villages were in favour of forming cooperative societies. While there are 6.24 lakh Yadav and Kurmas in the State as per the Samagra Kutumba Survey, there are 4,161 societies and to these another 3,351 new societies have been added.
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Government released a schedule to hold grama sabhas from May 10 to 20 and so far 1,852 gram sabhas were held in 1980 cooperative societies and 1.37 lakh beneficiaries selected. No society should collect more than ₹51 as membership fee as fixed by the government.
Limit on members
Care should be taken to ensure that only those eking a livelihood through sheep rearing were members. Noting that in some districts, students, those working and dependent on other vocations were had applied for membership the Minister asked the officials not to entertain such requests for now. As the number of sheep will go up significantly.
Measures were being taken to raise a particular variety of grass in some four lakh acres of forest lands and one lakh acres under Horticulture Department as fodder, the Minister said.