LAHORE: The agriculture minister has launched an inquiry into alleged embezzlement by the high-ups of the On Farm Water Management (OFWM) in subsidy being given to farmers for purchase of laser land levellers by overpricing the machines in connivance with the supplier firms.

On the direction of Minister Malik Nauman Langrial, Agriculture Secretary Wasif Khurshid formed a three-member committee on Friday to probe the embezzlement reports and fix responsibility.

The committee comprises the University of Agriculture Multan vice chancellor, director general Agriculture (field), and the chief of planning and evaluation cell of the Agriculture Department. The committee will submit its report within 10 days after scrutinising the pre-qualification of firms and the procurement process of laser land levelers.

The Punjab agriculture department had introduced a five-year plan (2019-24) worth Rs2.37bn for provision of 9,500 laser land levelers to the farmers, offering them Rs250,000 per unit subsidy. Of these, 1,700 units were to be provided to the applicants in the ongoing financial year. Each unit of the machine costing between Rs290,000 and Rs500,000 in the open market might reduce irrigation water usage by 25 to 30pc. The department had issued an advertisement in September 2019 for pre-qualification of the suppliers of the laser land levelers. Nineteen out of 31 firms were pre-qualified for the project.

The OFWM director general negotiated with the firms and fixed prices of the machines at more than the market rate. The prices were fixed between Rs465,000 and Rs695,000 to the disadvantage of the farmers desiring to get them on 50pc subsidy.

According to an official of the department, the standard of the machines selected for the project has not tested by any official laboratory, raising doubts over their performance. He claimed that a couple of the firms pre-qualified by the department were owned by some of his colleagues through their frontmen.

Saleemullah Tarar, a farmer from Hafizabad, moved the court against the department for providing substandard but overpriced machine. He said he was selected through balloting held by the department at the district level for the laser land leveler. But he was shocked to learn that he was to pay the price almost equal to the market price of the machine and there was no use of getting subsidy from the government.

Responding to a query, he said he moved the court against the ‘fraud’ of the department,

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2020