Member of Parliament D. Aravind here on Sunday said that the State government was not sending the proposal to the Centre for announcement of minimum support to turmeric despite being requested more than half-a-dozen times.
“Therefore, this time I have resolved to send four letters with the same matter to the Chief Minister to his official residence Pragathi Bhavan, CMO at Secretariat, his farm house and also to Telangana Bhavan. I will write the letter within a week,” he said and questioned that when his (KCR’s) well wisher and Chief Minister of neighbouring Telugu State Jagan Mohan Reddy announced bonus for 14 crops including turmeric, why the former did not do?
Mr. Aravind, addressing a press conference, said that the Centre designed an excellent formula to help out turmeric farmers and the new system would be superior to turmeric board. “The new set-up consists of board plus Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES) plus crop clusters. I describe it as board plus plus means major bonanza for turmeric farmers,” he said.
Elaborating at length the concepts of TIES and Clusters, he said that there would be an empowered committee chaired by commerce secretary to periodically review the progress of the approved projects and bottlenecks in exports. This would provide assistance for setting up and upgradation of infrastructure projects with overwhelming export linkages, quality testing, certification labs, cold chains, trade promotion centres, dry ports, export warehousing, packaging, cargo terminus at ports and airports and SEZs, he said.
He said that clusters have been identified across the country to promote export of different crops. Two turmeric clusters, one in Jagityal and one in Nizamabad district, would come up shortly. Required infrastructure needs to be provided in these clusters and the latest technology would be adopted in cultivation. Indian Institute of Packaging has been roped in for working on packaging standards for international marketing order to increase the demand for the identified products. Appealing to farmers not to fall prey to what he called the evil designs of political parties, he said the new set-up coming up in a few months would ensure good price for turmeric. No crop board established some decades ago was effective in doing justice to the farmers, he said.
