Hundreds queued at dealer points in Kurigram Sadar on Sunday and briefly blocked roads over short allocations and alleged irregularities; the DAE says the district holds about 1,000 tonnes of urea above demand.
In Ballaverkhas union the two-month-old Aman crop has gone without a single top-dressing; dealers have no urea and retailers sell at a premium, farmers allege a syndicate, the extension officer says the allocation fell short of the area planted.
Alam Mia, farming seven bighas, got two sacks in three days and needs four; dealer Abdul Rahim has sold out his 35-tonne allocation; DAE deputy director Alam Sharif Khan says there is no shortage, farmers are buying extra for fear of one, and more than 7,000 tonnes are due next month.
Farmers in Ulipur, Kurigram, surrounded a sub-assistant agriculture officer at Gabtali bazar on Friday evening, alleging that dealers are not selling urea at the government price while retailers charge up to Tk 50 a kilogram; police freed him after about half an hour.
At Gabtola bazar in Nageshwari, Kurigram, farmers who arrived at the scheduled hour found the dealer's 80 sacks already gone; they confined a sub-assistant agriculture officer in the warehouse and blocked the road with tree trunks until the UNO freed him around noon.
Farmers who arrived at a dealer's point in Nageshwari's Gabtala Bazar to find the fertiliser gone blocked the Madarganj-Kachakata road with tree trunks on Friday morning and confined a sub-assistant agriculture officer in the warehouse for about four hours.
Farmers blocked roads at Nageshwari in Kurigram after waiting all morning for fertiliser; one dealer said he had 40 sacks in store against about 600 farmers.
The district's September allocation is almost the same as last year's, yet farmers queue for hours; ponds need 1,334 tonnes each of urea and TSP a month with no allocation of their own, and the whole TSP quota is only 1,045 tonnes.
An order signed on 10 September by deputy secretary Md Maksudul Islam sets up the room in the ministry's Room 528 under the additional secretary for fertiliser management and inputs; two dealers' complaints had been logged by 2 pm on Sunday, joint secretary Akhtarunnahar said.
Speaking at the Secretariat after Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visited the ministry, Md Amin Ur Rashid said monitoring committees now sit in nearly every upazila and district, a ship arrives every week, the reserve is raised to 15 lakh tonnes before peak season and the situation will settle within
In Chuadanga's Alamdanga upazila, locals intercepted a truck moving TSP fertiliser allocated from a BADC godown without valid papers; police have taken the fertiliser, the truck and a grocery trader into custody.
The control room runs two shifts from 11 to 24 September and will act immediately on reports of artificial shortage, illegal storage or overcharging.
At least 15 farmer protests in a month, 204 mobile courts and 1,700 sacks recovered: why fertiliser in store is not reaching the field.
