Bhubaneswar, June 6: No poor will stay in hunger is the motto of the Odisha Government, sate Chief Secretary S C Mohapatra told a ten-member visiting team from Nepal on Monday.
The High-level Study Mission from Nepal led by Dil Bahadur Gurung, Member National Planning Commission of Nepal is on a two-day visit to the state to know about the innovative approaches and methods adopted by State in ensuring food security for all poor and vulnerable.
Mahapatra said, all concerned departments like food security and consumer welfare, women and child development, agriculture and farmers’ empowerment, scheduled tribe and scheduled caste development, social security and empowerment of persons with disability, water resources, panchayati raj, drinking water, housing and urban development work at tandem for materializing this motto on sustainable basis.
He said, “State is implementing national food security scheme, state food security program, social security measures for old, differently able and destitute”.
Recently the public distribution system (PDS) has been transformed with the adoption of technology, ground-truthing of database, data sanitization and dynamic data monitoring on a real-time basis.
Principal Secretary Food Security and Consumer Welfare Vir Vikram Yadav said the state started its journey as a food importing state; and, now become a food surplus State”.
He said State has been participating in decentralized paddy procurement operation of Union government since 2003-04”.
Yadav said Odisha is now procuring around 76 lakh million tons of paddy from farmers of the State which is converted to around 52 lakh million tons of custom milled rice inside the State”.
While State’s requirement for different schemes comes around 30 lakh million tonne, balance 22 lakh million tonne is delivered to the central pool of Government of India. Odisha is now the 4th largest rice supplier to the central pool.
Yadav said the State has ensured food security for more than 95.74 lakh families which constitute nearly 80 per cent of the total population of the State as per the 2011 census.
The entire TDPS operation is equipped with end to end computerization. Presently, around 12,124 FPSs are distributing nearly 1.87 lakh MT of food grains to 33.3 million beneficiaries per month through 90 per cent Aadhaar and Mobile OTP based authentication.
Feed-back management system has also been adopted under Mo Sarkar framework. He also apprised about the systems adopted for online grievance redressal, rice @ Rs 1 per kg, supply of fortified rice.
The visiting team was also told about the introduction and implementation of different supplementary nutrition programmes, mid-day meal, additional nutrition for undernourished children, various pensions, and ahara program in different urban centers near hospitals, rail stations and bus stands.
With UNI Inputs….
