Flying squad protection for fertilizer

Tennakoon KULASEKERA

A special flying squad with an emergency contact hotline will be set up next year with adequate funding to combat fertilizer frauds involving the subsidised fertilizer issued to farmers, said Agrarian Services and Wildlife Minister S M Chandrasena. The Minister said the Government spent nearly Rs 30,000 million annually to issue the fertilizer subsidy to farmers but a large slice of this fertilizer is pilfered by unscrupulous persons including a handful of officials to the detriment of the innocent farmers. The new scheme is intended to prevent all loopholes which contributed to such frauds - which amounted to about Rs 2 billion.

He said necessary steps have been taken to detect fertilizer frauds which had occurred in the past and handover the investigations to the CID. The Minister said his Ministry has also taken measures to curtail the use of chemical fertilizer by 20 percent and encourage the production of carbonic fertilizer which could be supplied to farmers under a 95 percent subsidy scheme.