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LAHORE, Jul 30 (APP):Minister for Agriculture & Livestock, Punjab Syed Ashiq Hussain Kirmani Tuesday chaired a high level meeting at Agriculture House, Lahore in which the progress of ongoing schemes related to agricultural development was reviewed.
In the meeting, the timelines of the ‘Transforming Punjab Agriculture Programme’ were also reviewed.
The minister said that a new era of agricultural development would begin in the province with the implementation of initiatives of the chief minister, Punjab. It was told during the briefing that so far 3 lakh 56 thousand farmers had submitted online applications for CM Kissan Card, after scrutiny of which more than 1 lakh 50 thousand applications had been sent to Bank of Punjab for approval. Apart from this, modern machinery (Pak Seeder) to be provided to the farmers under the CM Smog Control Programme was under preparation. During the briefing, he was further informed that so far, 920 orders had been booked for the superseders. Apart from this 168 super-seeders were nearing completion after manufacturing, and NESPAK was responsible for checking the quality of these superseders. Till now, 1,860 applications had been received under the Agricultural Graduates Internship Programme and committees had been notified in the districts to scrutinise the applications. Provincial Agriculture Minister Syed Ashiq Hussain Kirmani clarified that no compromise would be made on the quality during the production of super-seeders. Farmers who had not registered their mobile for registration of Kissan card need to follow up. Social media and other means of communication should also be used for the awareness of the farmers, he said and added physical verification for Kissan card registration of non-computerised areas should be arranged on emergency basis. He further said that after the establishment of model agriculture malls, standard agricultural inputs would be available to the farmers at controlled rates. He said that 6,300 agricultural tube wells were being shifted to solar system at 67 per cent subsidy to reduce the production cost of farmers.
Secretary Agriculture, Punjab Iftikhar Ali Sahoo said that the farmers who were facing problems in registration of Kissan card should be contacted with the relevant institutions to clear their concerns.
In the meeting, Special Secretary Agriculture Punjab Sheshanshah Faisal Azeem, Director General Agriculture Extension Chaudhry Abdul Hameed, Consultant Agriculture Department Dr Muhammad Anjum Ali, Director General Agricultural Information Punjab Naveed Asmat Kahloon, Director General Agriculture Water Management Punjab Malik Muhammad Akram, DG Agriculture Field Engineer Sohail Ahmed and other senior officers participated.