SUNGAI PETANI, Jan 24 — The National Farmers’ Association (Nafas) hopes that the federal government will expedite the tender offer to the organisation, to enable the distribution of subsidised fertiliser to paddy farmers this year.
Its chairman Datuk Zamri Yaakob said the paddy planting season for this year has already started in several states, such as Kelantan, Terengganu, Selangor and Perak, where farmers in these states need fertiliser for their crops.
“Once paddy planting starts and the seeds are sown, farmers need fertiliser… and we at Nafas have the largest fertiliser factory in Malaysia, which can produce 310,000 tonnes of fertiliser per year.
“Currently, there is a total of 35,000 tonnes of fertiliser in the factory ready to be distributed throughout the country,” he said, at a press conference after visiting the Malaysian NPK Fertiliser Sdn Bhd factory in Gurun, near here, today.
According to him, the fertiliser can meet the needs of about 200,000 paddy farmers across the country involving about 240,000 tonnes a year.
He added that the supply of fertiliser produced at the Nafas factory is quite large, such that it had to temporarily stop production for the week, due to lack of storage space.
Zamri said that Nafas also assured that there would be no delay in the delivery of fertiliser supplies throughout the country, in line with its “zero lates” initiative introduced by the association earlier.
“A total of 30 lorries can be mobilised in a day, and each lorry is capable of loading 25 tonnes of fertiliser, it is estimated that almost 1,000 tonnes can be distributed per day to the Regional Farmers’ Association, which placed the order.
“This is one of the measures we have taken, to ensure that there is no delay in the distribution of fertilisers, which has occurred before,” he said.
— Bernama
