Jhapa. Most of the private firms in the district have not maintained records related to the sale of chemical fertilizers.

The monitoring carried out on Tuesday under the leadership of Agriculture Knowledge Centre, Jhapa, found such problem, and directed the firms concerned to maintain the details as per the criteria and to compulsorily issue bills in every transaction.

Sagar Bista, chief of Agriculture Knowledge Centre, said that a joint monitoring was carried out at Bhadrapur and Birtamod municipalities, as well as in Haldibari and Barhadashi rural municipalities. According to him, most of the private firms were not keeping such records even though the cooperatives were systematically maintaining bills and reports related to sales details.

Special monitoring was carried out to find out whether the chemical fertilizers including urea, DAP and potash that the government has been providing to farmers at subsidized rates were being sold at the price determined by the local level. Bista said that the main basis of monitoring is whether the bill has been issued compulsorily while selling fertilizer to the farmers or not.

The government has been supplying chemical fertilizers to the farmers at subsidized rate through the Agricultural Inputs Company Limited and Salt Trading Corporation through the dealers selected on the recommendation of the local level.

Representatives of both the companies, representatives of District Administration Office, District Coordination Committee and Nepal Police were present in the inspection. The joint team inspected 11 sales outlets under four local levels.

According to the center, the monitoring will be continued in the coming days as well and necessary action will be taken against the vendors working against the standard. Likewise, coordination with all bodies concerned would be strengthened to ensure an environment to provide fertiliser to farmers in an easy, transparent and effective manner.