As 30,000 bags of urea fertilizer, which have been stored for years at the Tatopani dry port, rot, farmers complain that the crop cycle is being affected by the lack of fertilizer.
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Farmers who are in a hurry to plant maize and Chaite paddy are facing a shortage of fertilizer. However, 30,000 bags of chemical fertilizer (urea) that have been stored for months at the dry port customs office in Tatopani, the northern border, have started rotting.
According to Tul Bahadur Pandey, information officer at the Tatopani Dry Port and Customs Office, 29,826 bags of urea fertilizer have been lying idle in the customs warehouse in Bhotekoshi Rural Municipality-3 for years. '1,491 metric tons of fertilizer have been stored here for a long time,' he said. 'As the fertilizer occupies most of the port, it is difficult to load and unload other goods.'
The urea has melted and the fertilizer bags have become useless. Locals say that the fertilizer has become unusable after being stored in the warehouse for a long time.
The Customs Office has informed the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development and the concerned bodies about this. On the other hand, farmers complain that the crop cycle is affected due to the lack of fertilizer.
‘Planting has been delayed due to lack of fertilizer, but it is sad to hear the news that the fertilizer has rotted at the customs,’ said Chakradhwaj Tiwari, a leading farmer of Bahrabise Municipality-9, ‘Farming is done as usual, but urea is not available. Even if you get it, you have to pay more than double the price. After standing in line all day, you only get two to four kilos of fertilizer.’ He said that when two to four bags of fertilizer are needed for farming, the fertilizer that is available in the queue does not reach the Karesabari.
Like Tiwari, most farmers in the district share their experience of not receiving urea on time. He complains that there is always a shortage of fertilizer during the winter when potatoes, wheat, mustard and barley are cultivated. Farmers have to wait for the cooperative to buy fertilizer since morning.
Why did the fertilizer get stuck?
Silk Market Pvt. Ltd., Sinomac, Global Matix and Bidh Pvt. Ltd., under the Silk Company, had entered into a joint (JV) agreement with the Tatopani checkpoint, which was operational unilaterally after the earthquake. These companies had jointly imported the fertilizer from China.
According to Punya Prasad Upadhyay, information officer of the Agricultural Products Company Limited, these companies had agreed to bring 735,000 bags in the fiscal year 2079/80. As per the first contract, the company was blacklisted after the deposit was confiscated as a measure. ‘The companies signed a contract for 2500 tons and did not deliver even 500 tons on time. After not delivering on time, letters were drawn up 6/7 times from the beginning to the last time with a time limit of several days. Even after making agreement letters repeatedly, action has been taken against those companies for not delivering,’ Upadhyay said.
The supplier companies had gone to court against being blacklisted.
The last agreement was made on the condition that the fertilizer stored at the customs would be delivered to the agricultural materials company within 30 days and the remaining 21,500 tons of urea under the contract would be delivered within 107 days. According to the agricultural materials company, the final agreement was to be delivered by Jestha 15, 2081. However, he said that after the last agreement, 1300 tons of fertilizer did not arrive even after almost 300 days, the agricultural materials company blacklisted these companies as an action.
Silk Market, a representative of Silk Market, has been holding discussions with the company for a long time by storing fertilizer at the customs while it was unable to bring it on time due to low containers entering through the border. ‘After an agreement was reached between Silk Market and the agricultural materials company for a few metric tons of fertilizer, the fertilizer was finally sent to Kathmandu, but the remaining fertilizer was delayed much longer than the deadline given by the materials company, and there was also a problem of leaving containers short,’ said Sherpa.
According to Anirudra Thapa, the dry port warehouse manager of Tatopani Customs, 3590 metric tons of urea fertilizer had already entered from China from 18 Jestha 2080 to 2 Ashar 2080. Of which, about 2200 metric tons of fertilizer had been processed and sent to Kathmandu. ‘Now there are about 1400 tons left, we do not know what happened between the importer and the agricultural company, we have only heard that this case has reached the court,’ he said. What will happen to the fertilizer that is now stuck? No one has a clear answer.
Rajendra Prasad Chudal, Chief Customs Officer of Tatopani Dry Port Customs, said that it is not certain what to do here as the court process between the supplier and the agricultural materials is pending. ‘We have been requesting the proper management of the manure stored at the upper level for a long time. We wish the yard was empty as much as possible. We do not know what is happening between the supplier and the agricultural materials. We cannot say anything about the goods that are in the court process,’ he said. Upadhyay, Information Officer of the Agricultural Materials Company, said that the story is old as a time limit had been set for this at the time.
