To facilitate the country’s farmers, the government is going to construct eight modern food silos which are expected to be completed by 2025. Besides, three silos which are being constructed in different districts, are likely to be completed within this year.
Out of the eight modern silos, agreements have been signed to construct four of them, while tenders for two have been completed while tendering process for the rest two is under process.
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder disclosed this while speaking as the chief guest at the agreement signing ceremony of Barisal Silo Construction and online monitoring of Food Department offices and food warehouses across the country at the conference hall of the Directorate General of Food on Thursday.
Food Secretary Moshammat Nazmanara Khanum was the special guest at the function presided over by Director General of Food Department Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Earlier, agreements were signed to build three silos in Mymensingh, Tangail and Brahmanbaria. Besides Khulna and Naogaon, there are plans to build silos in two other places of the country.
Three of the eight silos are being made for wheat and five for rice storage. These silos have a total capacity of 5.35 lakh tonnes.
The Food Minister said, “Food security is a big problem for us. As the existing warehouses are old food stored there is damaged within two-three months. For this, construction of these silos is urgently needed to be completed by 2025 to increase the food storage capacity. And three silos are expected to be completed by December this year”.
“Moreover, we have plans to build 200 paddy silos in different parts of the country. Of them, 30 have been approved by the ECNEC. These paddy silos will have the facility to dry the paddy. As a result, farmers will be able to sell wet paddy directly,” added the food minister.
Food secretary Moshammat Nazmanara Khanum said, “Due to high moisture content in farmers' paddy, we often cannot buy their paddy. Paddy Silo will solve that problem. Farmers will be able to sell up to 24 percent wet paddy to the government”.
Meanwhile, an agreement was signed on online monitoring of food department offices and food warehouses across the country at the same event.