Bhadrak: The government has been implementing a host of schemes to boost dairy farming, but subsidies provided in dairy loans are allegedly not available to farmers in this district, a report said.
The farmers who have taken dairy loans from banks are paying off their loans in instalments, but their subsidies have allegedly been bungled.
There are two instances of subsidies being bungled in Dhamnagar block. Two farmers of this block had taken dairy loans. Five years have passed since they paid off their loans, but they have not got their subsidies.
The matter came to the fore when a youth named as Santosh Mohapatra tweeted about it Sunday drawing the attention of officials. Thereafter, the administration went into overdrive on the issue.
Replying to the tweet, the ADM-cum-Collector-in-charge Shyama Bhakta Mishra and Agriculture Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain assured that necessary steps will be taken after an investigation into the issue.
According to reports, Ganesh Prasad Sethi and Prabhati Rout of Anharpur in Bhagbanpur panchayat had taken loans of Rs 1.80 lakh each from the Sri Jagannath Cooperative Society for dairy farming in March 2015.
As per the government guidelines, subsidies on loans should be credited into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries after paying off loans for six months.
It was alleged that due to the negligence of the cooperative bank and officials, the beneficiary farmers have not been paid their subsidies even after five years.
Several other farmers in the area have not received their subsidies too.
The two farmers alleged that they had been weary of frequenting to the bank and the society to get the subsidies, but they failed to get no information about what happened to their subsidies.
They said that they had earlier drawn the attention of the then agriculture minister, officials of the society and bank and the district administration, but all went in vain.
In the tweet, Ganesh and Prabhati warned of immolation if the administration failed to take any action.
Bichitrananda Sahu, branch manager of the Balasore-Bhadrak Central Cooperative Bank (Dhamnagar) admitted that due to the fault of the bank, seven to eight farmers had to face such a problem.
