Financial Commissioner (FC), Agriculture Production Department, Pramod Jain today chaired a meeting to review Sub Mission on Agriculture Extension (SMAE) during 2016-17 and approval of State Extension work plan (SEWP) under SMAE for 2017-18.Director Agriculture Kashmir, Director Command Area, Director Sericulture, Director Horticulture, Director Floriculture, Senior officers from, SKUAST Jammu/Kashmir, Animal Husbandry, Sheep Husbandry and allied sectors attended the meeting.Mr Jain impressed upon all the executing officers to reduce the administrative cost of the Scheme so that the same could be utilized for development activities for the welfare of farming community. He also instructed the directors of SAMETIs’ of SKUAST-J/K to improve the level, quality & need of trainings provided to the field officers & also to reduce the cost of trainings in order to train more & more officers within available funds. He asked SAMETIs heads to devise standard sets of training manuals for different categories of field functionaries within two months.
Further, Mr. Jain advised to strengthen the convergence & integration component of the Scheme which is a niche area. He instructed them to publish the advance extension visit schedule and circulate the same to concerned Divisional Commissioners & Deputy Commissioners of the districts and also be uploading them in the web portal, for better dissemination and monitoring. He also directed to get the evaluation study done of both the divisions for assessment of work done during the year 2016-17 under the Scheme. He added that the complete data base of the progressive farmers of the State is completed at the earliest and efforts be made to link them by use of technology including mobile services in order to disseminate the latest innovations and information to the farmers.
The Financial Commissioner stressed upon all HODs’ to prepare a proper documentation of good work done & success stories of progressive farmers.He fixed the target of one lakh farming families to be covered under the Scheme during 2017-18 year. He also directed the concerned officers to cover all the blocks of the State under the Scheme.He further re-iterated that everything should be done in time and instructions be taken seriously and quality standards of work should be maintained and all the reports particularly MPRs, QPRs, Audited Utilization Certificates (AUC) etc. should be submitted as per the standard format and within timelines devised by the concerned monitoring agencies. He advised the mission Directors to hold monthly meeting of all the concerned departments.It was also stressed that the implementing agencies should go in for Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme (DBT) especially for ten components under the same.