Minister orders speeding up process of Kisan Card delivery

LAHORE : Punjab Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Syed Ashaq Hussain Kirmani on Wednesday chaired a meeting at Bank of Punjab Head Office in which present status and issues related to Chief Minister Punjab Kisan Card were reviewed.

The minister directed to speed up the process of Kisan Card delivery and constituting a team which would work according to an organised strategy.

Secretary Agriculture, Punjab Iftikhar Ali Sahoo and Bank of Punjab President Zafar Masood also attended the meeting.

The minister said that the issuance of Kisan Card was a history-making and farmer-friendly project of Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif.

Registration of 12 lakh farmers for Kisan Card had been completed till now while Punjab Bank had approved 446,000 applications while 320,000 farmers had received Kisan Card, he added.

The provincial minister maintained that the process of purchasing through Kisan Card was going on at 2,600 registered dealers’ shops across the Punjab and since Kisan Card became active till now, the farmers had made purchases worth 1.70 billion rupees.

He said that according to the vision of Maryam Nawaz, mega projects worth Rs 400 billion were being implemented for the prosperity of the farmers of Punjab which would reduce the cost of production of farmers and make it possible to achieve the agricultural production goals.

Kirmani further said that 136 delivery centres established at the tehsil level were continuing to provide Kisan cards to the farmers.

The minister directed to regularly monitor the purchase process through Kisan Card and to take strict action against those who created artificial shortage of seeds, fertilisers & agricultural medicines and dealers who charged more than the notified government rates.

He made it clear that in the district in which complaints would be received from the farmers for charging excessive prices against the dealers, then the deputy director of Agriculture Extension or the relevant officer would be responsible for it.

In addition, he issued instructions to advertise as a direction on the helpline of Agriculture Department regarding this.

The Provincial Agriculture Minister added that the chief minister, Punjab announced to increase the number of Kisan cards from 5 lakh to 7.5 lakh, apart from allowing physical verification in non-digitised areas for Registration of Kisan Card.

Ashiq Kirmani issued orders to inform farmers about the CM announcement of physical verification in non-digitised areas through the use of print, electronic and social media.

Director General Agriculture Extension Chaudhry Abdul Hameed, Director General Agricultural Information Punjab Naveed Ismat Kahlon, Group Chief Corporate and Investment Bank of Punjab Nofal Dawood, Head of Marketing Services Bank of Punjab Asad Zia and other officers participated in the meeting.