Excelsior Correspondent
KISHTWAR, Apr 19: Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCS&CA) Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali today reiterated directions for providing adequate supply of ration to the people in a fair and transparent manner.
The Minister was chairing a meeting of the FCS&CA department to review stock and supply position in this hilly district here at New DC Office Complex here today.
Minister of State for Transport and R&B, Sunil Sharma, Legislator Firdous Ahmed Tak, Secretary FCS&CA Shafiq Raina, ADC Kishtwar Kishori Lal, SSP Kishtwar Sandeep Wazir, CPO Yasir Balwan, Assistant Director FCS&CA Kishtwar Athar Amin Zargar besides other district officers and sectoral heads were present in the meeting.
Reviewing the performance of the department, the Minister was informed that ration up to March 2017 has been distributed in all the blocks of the district while distribution for the current month is under process. He was also informed that the ration in the cutoff of areas of the district is available up to May 2017 as the same has been stocked well in advance before the advent of winter.
While highlighting the status of ration under NFSA, the chair was informed that 98% of the ration has been distributed whereas under MMSFES, 85% distribution has been made till date and the rest is available in stores.
Acting upon certain complaints received from different quarters, the Minister ordered to seize the store and stock register of TSO Kishtwar.
In this regard, he directed ADC to conduct a physical verification of stock position within 3 days. He further directed ADC to remove encroachment at FCS&CA ration store in Kishtwar besides taking up the issue with RDD for construction of retaining wall of ration store at Padder.
While reiterating the Government’s commitment to provide quality ration to the people, Zulfkar said that ration supply to the State has been increased from 7.56 lakh metric ton to 12 lakh metric ton besides number of BPL beneficiaries have been increased by 60%.
The Minister said that strict action would be taken against those indulging in black-marketing and pilferage of food grains and further directed the district administration to monitor vigilantly all the shops on regular basis.
The Minister laid stress on strengthening the online public distribution system by linking it to biometric system of distribution and said the act shall bring transparency in distribution of food grains to the needy.
Later, the Minister met with the deputations from various group of people who presented their demands like shortage of ration, kerosene oil, no- refund on gas subsidy, issue of BPL status beside a few other. The minister assured the people for redressal of their problems shortly.
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