Srinagar: Over 96,000 metric tonnes (MTs) of food-grains have been distributed by the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs in June under various food security schemes including 33,988.25 MTs under NFSA, and 30,690.05 MTs under PMGKAY, marking an achievement of 94.26 percent, and 93.79 percent distribution target.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that another 13,407.07 MTs were distributed under non-NFSA with an additional 18,505.29 MTs under JKFES, which is a J&K government’s food security scheme. He said that the distribution was carried out entirely through PoS devices with biometric Aadhaar and dealer authentication.
The statement said that the department distributed over 1 lakh metric tonnes of food-grains to the beneficiaries in May 2021, during Covif-19 restrictions. Moreover, 1011 ONORC transactions were added in June, taking the total number of ONORC transactions to 4417 for J&K, helping it consistently retaining 6th place in the national index.
The department has initiated a slew of measures for streamlining the public distribution system in J&K, and as a part of this effort, updatation of 634 more PoS devices from offline to online mode for the July distribution cycle has been made for making the distribution process further transparent and credible.
To reach out to the most vulnerable sections of the society, it was informed that both the provincial heads of the department had been instructed to immediately launch special drive to reach out, identify and issue ration cards and food-grains to the weakest and vulnerable sections of the society including street dwellers, hawkers, laborers, migrant laborers, physically challenged and specially-abled.
“Subject to the target ceilings under NFSA, weaker and vulnerable sections of the society, including those whose incorporation has been directed by the Supreme Court will be included on priority basis through this special drive,” the department’s spokesman said adding that the provincial heads would further devise a fool-proof mechanism to provide ration under portability or through other acceptable arrangement to NFSA-registered migrating nomadic families after their proper data mapping.