In view of the upcoming State Budget on February 5, the beleaguered rubber growers of central Travancore are raising pressure on the Kerala government over an “unacknowledged” suspension of the Rubber Price Incentive Scheme (RPIS).
The scheme, operated by the State government, appears to have gone off the track as the website for filing the subsidy claims has ceased to operate since December 6. The delay in restoring the website is attributed to the non-payment of dues to the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which manages it.
“While hundreds of crores of rupees is being allocated towards the RPIS in the State Budget every year, the scheme is actually going off the track due to the failure of the State government in fixing the issues that have crept in. In view of this, a meeting of all Rubber Producers Societies (RPS) in the State will be convened on February 1 to plan a series of protests,” said Babu Joseph, general secretary of the National Consortium of Rubber Producers’ Societies (NCRPS).
As per estimates, only about 1.70 lakh applications for incentives to the tune of ₹9.75 crore could be filed during the brief period when the website had been functional in the current phase. Of this, only 47,999 were forwarded to the State government after verification while not even a single rupee has been released on this account till date.
In the previous plan period (2022-23), as many as 8.37 lakh bills were filed through the website ebt.kerala.gov.in and of this, 8.17 lakh was forwarded to the State government. Although bills to the tune of around ₹215 crore were approved, the government is yet to release ₹42.90 crore on this account as well.
Under the RPIS scheme, the government provides the farmers with the difference between ₹170, which is the guaranteed price, and the price published by the Rubber Board for 1 kg of sheet rubber and latex. To claim the subsidy, farmers should submit the bills from rubber dealers to the RPS in their respective areas. Once verified by the field officers of the Rubber Board, the RPS authorities upload these bills to the State government’s website and amount is credited directly to the bank accounts of growers.
