Raipur, June 13 (HS). Providing rice to the poor is the first priority of the government. If negligence in distribution or distribution of bad rice is reported, strict action will be taken against the concerned food officer. Food Minister Dayal Das Baghel gave these instructions in a review meeting in Nava Raipur today, Thursday.
On this occasion, Food Department Secretary Basavaraju S., Director Jitendra Kumar Shukla, Special Secretary K.D. Kunjam, Additional Director Rajiv Kumar Jaiswal, District Level Food Officer, Assistant Food Officer, Marketing Officer and Civil Supplies Corporation officials were present.
Food Minister Baghel gave strict instructions to the officials and said that ensure timely distribution of ration to the people every month through fair price shops. If any complaint is received regarding any food officer, strict action will be taken against them. He has also asked to make 100% ration cards of all registered workers and has instructed food officers to regularly inspect the shops in their respective areas. During this, he has asked to observe the status of storage of rice, gram, sugar, salt, kerosene in fair price shops, status of distribution to beneficiaries, stock register and other information.
The Food Minister said that the poor should get the rice they deserve. Any kind of cutbacks and negligence in this will not be tolerated. On receiving a complaint regarding rice distribution, strict action will be taken against the Food Officer and Assistant Food Officer. Pay special attention to the quality of rice. Under no circumstances will bad rice be distributed.
The Food Minister has given instructions to store ration materials in advance in inaccessible areas before the rains. In such places of the state where transport routes get blocked during the rainy season, advance storage of food grains, sugar, salt and kerosene is done before the rainy season to make them easily available to consumers.
Food Secretary Basavaraju S. has instructed the food officers to make ration cards of the special backward tribal families on priority. For this, he has instructed to mark all the missed beneficiaries village panchayat wise and also register the names of the family members in the ration card. He said that the ration card beneficiaries who have not renewed their cards should get the renewal done soon and instructed to get e-KYC done for the missed beneficiaries. For the distribution of ration material based on Aadhaar authentication under the public distribution system, the work of seeding in the ration card database is being done by obtaining the Aadhaar numbers of the head and members in the ration cards. He has instructed to get the paddy lifted soon from those paddy procurement centers from where paddy has not been lifted. There are 77 lakh 11 thousand 537 ration card holders in the state, the number of fair price shops is 13 thousand 789, the number of inaccessible shops is 184.