By Siraj Khan, Nepalgunj, Nov. 27: Farmers in Banke are crowding at the office of the Food Management and Trading Company Ltd. to sell paddy as the Company has started to purchase paddy.

Farmers from across the district have thronged at the company office as it is buying paddy at the rate as set by the government.

The paddy growers have a point to rush because the FMTC has fixed that it would buy only 40 thousand quintals of paddy.

Nirmal Thapa, Chief of the FMTC, Nepalgunj, said, “Owing to COVID-19 infection, this year the token system has been utilized for the managed buying and selling.”

He said that as soon as the company started buying paddy, there was a rush of people coming to the office for sale.

According to the company, every single farmer is given a token of 50 quintals at a time.

Chief Thapa said tokens for all the fixed quantity of paddy to be bought had already been distributed within four days from November 22 when the Company started purchasing paddy.

This year there has been a good production of paddy so farmers are still coming to sell their production and we have requested the center to increase the quota, said the FMTC, Nepalgunj.

The FMTC is buying coarse paddy at Rs. 2,735 and medium paddy at Rs. 2,885 per quintal.

The company remains opened to buy paddy from 9 am to 4 pm every day except for Saturday.