Jharkhand may fall just short of implementing National Food Security Act (FSA) across the State as manpower crunch for carrying out preliminary activities has become a bottleneck that has held the progress back so far with names of districts where the largest scheme of its kind in the world would be implemented from July 1 are still under wraps.
The department of Food & Civil Supplies is likely to put the overall preparedness before Union Food & Civil Supplies Minister, Ram Vilas Paswan during his visit on June 6 to the State capital. With just 26 days left to start disbursing food grains to beneficiaries, the department seems to have done in by non-availability of booth-level-officers (BlOs) in big cities.
“We faced the problem from BlOs end especially after the direction of Supreme Court not to put teachers in activities other than education. A similar notice was also issued by Human Resource Development department. So, there has been some delay in big cities,” said Minister, Food & Civil Supplies, Saryu Roy.
While addressing a conclave on FSA on Thursday, Roy said any final decision about districts where the largest social sector scheme will be rolled out would be known after June 20, yet delay is an unavoidable scenario for Jharkhand. Also, the department will implement various measures to plug leakages in the existing public-distribution-system which is incidentally the infrastructure on which the modern supply chain of the FSA will be developed.
“There will be online monitoring of the delivery system to ensure that the food grains reaches the intended beneficiary. This system will be used on trial basis for six months,” added Roy.
The department appears precariously positioned in terms of manpower to execute the scheme which aims to feed 2,64,43,330 beneficiaries spread in two categories—Antodaya Families and Priority Household-- of 50,08,304 families across Jharkhand. The Minister emphasised on increasing strength of the department to manage distribution of huge amount food grains likely to be allotted to the State under the scheme besides exploring the possibility of diverting human resource towards the scheme. Notably, around 1.39 metric tonne of food grains would be required per month.
Roy said, “The department needs to strength to implement the scheme and we all know our shortcomings. We are short of manpower and one way could be to retain retiring employees on certain conditions. We have also asked deputy commissioners to use excess manpower with other departments for the implementing the scheme”.
The NDA’s flagship scheme aims at providing rice at Rs 3/kg, wheat at Rs 2/kg and coarse grains at Rs 1/kg to the two categories of the beneficiaries. Even as the Antodaya family would get 35kg of grains each month the Priority Household would get 5kg of food grains for each member of the family.
Meanwhile, Speaker of Jharkhand Assembly Dinesh Oraon expressed success can be achieved by incorporating suggestions given by participants of the symposium.
“Most of the suggestions given in the symposium address the finer aspects of the scheme and complete success can be achieved by accommodating those suggestions in the implementation phase,” maintained Oraon.
The symposium was attended by representatives of non-government organizations, MlAs, economists and social activists.