Designated teams of Department of Agriculture are inspecting the standardisation of underweight urea bags, supplied by a company that imported them a Sultanate of Oman recently.
As most of the manually packed 50-kg urea bags were found to be underweight and The Hindu unearthed it, Collector M. Karunakaran asked Joint Director, Department of Agriculture, C. Chandrasekaran to convene a meeting of his subordinates and representatives of Krishak Bharati Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO), an Indian cooperative society that imported the bulk fertilizer from Sultanate of Oman and packs it in 50-kg bags through outsourcing, and Tamil Nadu Cooperative Marketing Federation (TANFED) to find a solution to this problem.
Subsequently, special fertilizer checking squads, headed by Assistant Director of Agriculture (Quality Control) R. Kajendra Pandian, and Agricultural Officers of all 19 blocks inspected all Primary Cooperative Credit Societies and private dealers in the district. The officials issued ‘stop sales’ order for 355.35 tonnes of KRIBHCO urea.
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It included 75.30 tonnes of underweight KRIBHCO urea bags from 17 private dealers and 87.60 tonnes from 36 Primary Agricultural Cooperative Credit Societies. ‘Stop sales’ orders were also issued for 192.45 tonnes stocked in TANFED fertilizer godown.
Having left with no other option, the KRIBHCO Sales Officer assured to standardise underweight urea bags within a week. Subsequently, standardisation of weight of each bags of urea was started even as the quality control special squad was inspecting the work. Work on standardisation of underweight urea bags was started in TANFED fertilizer godowns and private fertilizer retail shops. Mr. Kajendra Pandian and his subordinates were inspecting the work. At block level, the inspection was being done by a block-level fertilizer squad.
“The block-level fertilizer squad will inspect the weight of standardised urea bags at each Primary Agricultural Cooperative Credit Society and fertilizer retails shops. Only after my inspection, the urea bags will be allowed for sale,” Mr. Chandrasekaran added.
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