Lieutenant Governor, Girish Chandra Murmu today reviewed the functioning of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCS & CA) department in a meeting here at the Civil Secretariat.Sh. Farooq Khan, Advisor to Lieutenant Governor; Sh. BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Secretary; Sh. Arun Kumar Mehta, Financial Commissioner, Finance; Sh. Atal Dulloo, Financial Commissioner, Health and Medical Education; Sh. Hirdesh Kumar, Commissioner Secretary, School Education & Social Welfare; Sh. Pandurang K. Pole, Secretary Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCS & CA); Sh. Jatinder Singh Director FCS & CA, Ms Nitu Gupta, Controller Legal Metrology and other senior officers attended the meeting.The Lt Governor sought a comprehensive report regarding the allocation of food-grains, dumping of stocks in snow bound areas, departmental and FCI godowns and their storage capacity along with the present status regarding functioning of fair price shops, end to end computerization of TPDS Operations (e-PDS), supply of PDS Kerosene, LPG coverage and schemes related to welfare institutions and hostels etc.The Lt Governor directed the officers to rationalize the distribution of food grains across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir under various programmes and schemes like National Food Security Act, MMSFES, PDS etc. He further directed for the speeding up of adhaar seeding of the ration-cards.
The Lt Governor asked the functionaries to review the facilities being provided to the in-mates of Special schools, shelter homes like Nari-Niketan, Bal-Ashram etc and submit a report in that regard within one month.While reviewing the distribution of LPG Cylinders in the far-flung areas, the Lt Governor directed the officers to work out effective mechanism for supply and distribution and open up more stores to ensure that the sufficient supply of LPG Cylinders and other essential commodities reaches the population living in far-off and difficult areas of the Union Territory.The chair was informed that 10.63 lakh families have been covered under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.Observing the paucity of enforcement staff in Legal Metrology department, the Lt Governor called for empowering SDMs, Tehsildars and Naib-Tehsildars for conducting inspection of consumer outlets for ensuring quality and proper pricing of consumer goods. He further asked the Legal Metrology department to submit a proposal regarding staff requirement in the department.A proposal to effectively utilize the services of labourers who were earlier working in FCS & CA stores, was also sought on immediate basis.