BENGALURU: While a lot of focus has been on the Indira Canteens, the places which make it possible to serve hot food to so many people are the centralised Indira kitchens. And, according to officials, a lot of care has been taken to make the kitchens hygienic and efficient.
Presently, there are six kitchens and, in the coming days, 27 kitchens will supply food to all the 198 canteens in the city. Each kitchen has been designed keeping in mind the menu and the number of people it is expected to serve. All the food is steam-cooked and food for about 6,000 people can be prepared in two hours.
BBMP Special Commissioner for Indira Canteens, Manoj Rajan, said, “If you look at the menu, we need to make both white rice and flavoured rice every day, so we have separate vessels for cooking rice.”
Each kitchen has three idli steamers, which can prepare a whopping 4,500 idlis in an hour. The prepared food is transported to the canteens in hot boxes so that it remains hot. A cold storage room is used to store vegetables and curd rice. The overall capacity of each kitchen is to feed about 6,000 people, and this can also be increased.
No one to care for these workers
Workers who have come from Shivamogga to help with the preparation of food at the kitchen at Konena Agrahara haven’t been given accomodation yet. One of them said, “We had to sleep on the roof last night and were asked to drink water from the wash basin.”