BHUBANESWAR: A 10-member study mission from Nepal under the leadership of member, National Planning Commission of Nepal, Dil Bahadur Gurung is on a two-day tour to Odisha to get first-hand knowledge on the innovative approaches of the State in ensuring food security for the poor.
On the first day of the visit, the team comprising officers from different ministries associated with agriculture and food security in the government of Nepal held and interactive session with top bureaucrats of the State government at a meeting under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra, at the Secretariat here on Monday.
“No poor will stay in hunger is the motto of our Government,” Mahapatra told the mission.
He said the State is implementing national food security scheme, state food security programme, social security measures for old, differently-abled and destitute. The targeted public distribution system (TPDS) has been revamped with adoption of technology and dynamic data monitoring on a real time basis.
Speaking on the food security journey of the State in the last two decades, Principal Secretary Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Vir Vikram Yadav said, Odisha once a food dependant State has become food surplus.
He said the State is now procuring around 76 lakh tonne of paddy (around 52 lakh tonne of rice) from farmers out of which the State’s requirement for different welfare schemes is around 30 lakh tonne and the balance 22 lakh tonne is delivered to Central pool of the country. It is the fourth largest rice supplier to the Central pool.
He further informed the delegation that around 12,124 fair price shops (FPSs) are distributing nearly 1.87 lakh tonne of food grains to 33.3 million beneficiaries per month through Aadhar and mobile OTP based authentication. Feedback management system has also been adopted under ‘Mo Sarkar’ framework.