To mark the World Milk Day, the State Cooperative Department will organise a ‘Doodh ka Doodh, Pani ka Pani’ campaign from June 1 to 7. The objective of the campaign is to promote milk production and its consumption in Uttarakhand. The Minister of State for Cooperative Development and Higher Education – Independent Charge- Dhan Singh Rawat informed journalists at his Vidhan Sabha office on Monday that the programme would be organised in all districts, blocks and municipalities and Member of Parliament, legislators and all public representatives would participate in the week long programme. To attract public participation, the department has decided that it will offer milk and products like Ghee, butter, and Yoghurt at dealer price to the general public.
The department would organise variety of competitions like ‘milk moustache contest’ and ‘selfie with milk’ for youngsters. The department also intends to provide free lactometer and strips to general public on the occasion. Rawat appealed that people especially children should drink at least one glass of milk every day to remain healthy. The Minister said that the department plans to digitise functioning of all milk cooperative so that all data is available online.
He said that the department has purchased 1134 automatic machines to check the quality of milk; these machines would be distributed free of cost to all milk cooperative producing more than 20 litre of milk per day.
The department has also purchased 13 milk vans with facility of refrigeration. The Minister claimed that the milk of Anchal dairy is best in quality but admitted that it is able to provide 2 lakh litre of milk per day while the requirement in the State is 27 lakh litres per day. Rawat said that majority of the milk coming to the State is spurious, adulterated or inferior in quality and advocated a stringent quality control measure for milk in the State.
Rubbishing former Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s charge that the State Government is planning to abolish milk bonus scheme for milk producers, Dhan Singh Rawat said that ex- CM had only made the declaration and no bonus was paid but now the BJP Government will pay the pending dues of milk producers.