AGARTALA, Sep 21 (TIWN): Funded by Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt of India has separate guidelines for “Organic and Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region (MOVCDNER), but in Tripura it is not followed properly, alleged job aspirants.

Job aspirants under the dept has complained certain issues to TIWN. They said, under these guidelines several administrative posts are also allocated. For example PMU ( Project Management Unit) .

In the guidelines there is the mention of the state level implementation system  and also provisions of one state level executive committee and one State Lead Agency.

The state Lead Agency/ Organic Mission/ Organic Commodity Board shall be an

independent agency with its own bank account. Necessary professional/ trained manpower

and staff shall be recruited on contractual basis out of the funds provided for management of

lead agency. States can also name any of the existing state agencies as Lead agency but

the implementation of the mission will be managed through dedicated manpower hired

specifically for the Mission management and implementation, but in Tripura, there is no State Lead Agency for implementation of MOVCDNER. The Joint Director Agriculture ( Research) at SARS , AD Nagar implements this project.

In the administrative system of MOVCDNER , after State Lead Agency there should be a service provider agency  . In Tripura two service provider agency were selected through  tender process. One is SIMFED , Sikkim another one ICCOA, Bangalore.

They implement the project at District level to village level. But these two agencies are only earning money from the Govt, without any proper availability of working staffs at all the levels. In every district only 1 staff was recruited. How is it possible for only one person to cover the whole distrIct? In every district there are around 20 or more villages. This is a technical project  and for proper implementation of this project there is a requirement for  technical persons ( viz. BSc , MSc Agriculture, Horticulture Specialist) . But these two agencies have recruited staffs with educational qualifications of hardly Madhyamik pass , 12 th pass or normal graduates who dont have any specialized knowledge on agriculture and specifically of organic farming, FPO formation, Business etc . These two agencies have recruited only 1 or 2 agriculture specialists for the entire state of Tripura which clearly not at all sufficient. At the field level most of the persons appointed by these two agencies are continuously failing to provide the accurate knowledge of various related matters to the ultimate beneficiaries ( farmers) because of their lack of technical knowledge about the subject of Agriculture and organic farming. These two agency  don’t have any office at state or district  level.