Ration: State commences beneficiary relation drive

MP | 12 Nov 2022 | Kolkata: The state Food and Supplies department on Saturday kicked off the two-day 'Upobhokta Samparko Abhijan' (Beneficiary Relation Drive) across the state from Saturday to meet the consumers directly and collect their feedback on the services provided by the department. 

Senior officials of the department, including those in the rank of additional secretary, deputy secretary and director level, interacted with the beneficiaries to know the difficulties faced by them so that further improvement in service can be effected. 

"Sometimes we receive complaints from the consumers regarding dealers offering less than the earmarked food grains to them. Such field-level drive act as a confidence building measure among the beneficiaries as officials even in the rank of secretary interact with them," state Food and Supplies minister Rathin Ghosh said. 

The department has already started distribution of fortified rice through ration which has a greater for value than normal rice that is supplied at ration shops. "In the recent past, there have been some complaints where beneficiaries have claimed that they have received plastic rice in ration. 

We will assure the beneficiaries that the rice they have received is actually fortified and they can have it without any confusion," a senior official of the department said. The officials will be interacting not only with the consumers but also with the fair price shop dealers and accordingly provide feedback to the department for further improvement. 

In April, the department had held a similar drive when an encouraging response of the beneficiaries and the good practices of the dealers were noticed and some scopes of improvement were identified. 

There are 21,000 ration shops across the state. About 6.1 lakh people in the state are National Food Security Act (NFSA) ration card holders while nearly 4 crore are under the Khadya Sathi scheme of the state government. 

http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/ration-state-commences-beneficiary-relation-drive-498949