Minister for Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution, Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali Saturday chaired a meeting to review the functioning of the Department.During the meeting, Director FCS &CA, Kashmir, Tasaduq Jeelani presented a detailed overview of the functioning of the department.While taking the stock of food-grains in FCI go-downs as of March 2017, the Minister was informed 82606 metric tons of rice and 10766 metric tons of wheat is available. The Minister was also briefed about district wise allocation and distribution of rice. It was informed that monthly allocation for all the districts of Kashmir division stands at 106100 quintals while over 70148 quintals of food grains were distributed.During the course of meeting modalities for constitution of Consumer Forums, Councils and Vigilance Monitoring Committees was discussed. It was informed that proposal for constitution of Consumer Protection Forum has already been submitted to the administrative Department.
Regarding status of implementation of E-PDS Project, CAPD Director said the department has already installed 269 computers in all the districts up-to the TSO / Go-down level and added that efforts are on to bring 100 percent accuracy in the database for online allocation of food-grains.Terming digitization need of the hour, Minister asked employees to acquaint themselves with technological know-how. He directed Assistant Directors of CAPD to ensure data used is correct so to bring the Portal at par with the target. The Minister stressed on the streaming of online allocation of food grains and in this regard directed the officials that variation in portal status and targets should be minimized to zero and to submit Action Taken Report (ATR) within three days.For benefits of consumers, the Minister suggested creation of Fair Shop Price Directory and asked the officials to upload same on the department’s website. Stressing on the need to bringing transparency, Zulfkar said the FCS&CA department should initiate the process for Food Audit by the end of April 2017 and directed TSOs to expedite the process of the seeding Ration Cards with Aadhar. The minister was briefed that 663197 ration cards have been seeded so far.