SHILLONG, FEB 9: Meghalaya is all set to implementation the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which seeks to provide affordable and adequate food grains to over 21.49 lakh people from this month.
Meghalaya will be the second state to implement the NFSA, 2013 after Tripura in the north eastern region.
“We are ready to implement the NFSA in the state from this month onwards,” Food Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Minister Clement Marak told reporters on Tuesday.
Informing that the centre had already sanctioned the allocation for Meghalaya, he said, “The department is already in the process of distributing the NFSA cards to the targeted beneficiaries,” adding “We have also informed all the districts to hold one more hearing for entertaining of claims and objections on this regard.”
Under the NFSA, the state is entitled for having this programme to be extended to 77.79 per cent for rural and 50.87 per cent for urban areas.
“In term of population out of 21.49 lakh beneficiaries, 18.45 lakh are in rural areas while 3.34 lakh in urban areas,” Marak said. According to him, rice and wheat will be provided to the targeted beneficiaries at Rs 3 per kg and Rs 2 per kg respectively.
“Each beneficiary of a family will be getting at least 5 kg,” he said.
When asked, the minister said that government employees are totally excluded from getting the benefits of the NFSA scheme considering that they have job security.
Giving more details on the monthly allocation of food grains sanctioned by the centre to the state government, he said in as far as rice is concerned, the state will getting 8792.18 metric tons for priority, 448.53 MT for AAY and 3308.09 MT for tide over.
For wheat, the centre has sanctioned 1483.88 MT for priority, 75.70 MT for AAY and 558.31 for tide over, he said.
On the system in which the government proposed to implement the distribution of foodgrains under the NFSA, Marak said, “We will follow the old system (PDS). The foodgrains will be routed through the PDS wholesale dealers then to fair price shops for distribution to the beneficiaries.”
Stating that foodgrains under scheme is being supplied by the centre free of cost, he however said, “The state government has to bear only 25 per cent for administrative aspect which involves transportation, handling and storage of the foodgrains.”
It may be mentioned here, the state government had last year, approved the list of beneficiaries under the NFSA based on the socio-economic census of the state.
Meanwhile, Mara said that the government is also contemplating to increase the coverage of the scheme.-By Our Reporter
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