Long wait for farmers for money after having sold paddy in DPCs

Farmers petition District Collector for delayed payment; students seek intervention for refund from training institute.

A group of farmers, who are waiting for more than two months for getting the money for the paddy they had sold in the Union government’s direct procurement centre, submitted petition with District Collector R. Sukumar on Monday seeking his intervention.

The petitioner farmers said the State government had opened 40 paddy Direct Procurement Centres (DPC) in Tirunelveli district and the union government had established 25 DPCs for procuring paddy from the farmers at the minimum support price fixed by the Centre.

While the State is paying the amount in the farmers’ bank accounts immediately after procuring the paddy at its DPC, the union government is yet to pay this amount even after two months for the paddy procured in the DPCs at Kuppaikurichi, Keezhapaattam, Mela Seval, Ariyakulam and Naththam.

“Consequently, around 300 farmers have been waiting indefinitely for the amount to be paid in their accounts by the Centre. Hence, the Collector should instruct the officials of the Union government to pay the paddy procurement amount to the farmers without further delay,” said Thalavai, one of the affected farmers.

A group of students of a private training centre, who were allegedly cheated by the training institute after collecting the course fee from them also submitted petition to the Collector seeking his intervention to get back their money.

The affected students said they all doing their graduation in various colleges, had joined a 6-months certificate programme in a private institute’s branch at Vannarpet here for getting jobs with attractive salary.

“After collecting the fee from us, the training institute’s branch manager and her associate gave us receipt for the course fee. Even as the course was about to start, the office was closed down without any intimation to the students. When we tried to contact them, their mobile phones remain switched off. As we contacted the head-office of this institute, we came to know that the branch manager and her associate had not paid our fee to the head-office. Hence, the Collector should help us to get our money back,” said P. Abdullah, one of the affected students, who is working with a private firm for paying the fee of ₹15,000 for two courses.