BHUBANESWAR: Food security rights activists of Odisha have raised question marks on the intention of the State Government in implementing National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Stating that the Government has not even returned the cost which was recovered from persons who had been wrongly enrolled in the beneficiary list, the activists said the former is yet to cover over 10 lakh people under the fold of food security laws.
The Centre had set a target to cover 3.26 crore persons in the State to provide their food security. However, even two years after the NFSA came into effect, only 84,50,466 families have been brought under its coverage so far, which comes to 3.16 lakh persons. This means another 10 lakh have been left out of the NFSA ambit.
After facing severe criticism for enrolling ineligible beneficiaries in the list, the State Government had revisited the beneficiary list and registered cases against those who had made it to the roll in an illegal manner. As many as 6,786 cases were registered and 353 persons arrested. From about 1,19,802 persons, the Government collected `42.13 crore as recovery of cost.
According to rights campaigner Pradip Pradhan, the Government in August last year decided to amend the order and withdraw cases and refund the cost to people. However, the funds have not been paid back yet, he alleged.
The food rights activists have also alleged that the Government has completely glossed over the quality aspects of food provided under mid-day meal scheme. Although the school children are being provided cooked food, there have been several complaints about the quality. Under the ICDS scheme, the quality of 'chhatua' distributed to the students and its packaging is far from hygienic. Pradhan said there is no fair way of testing the quality of the material and the samples are not drawn in a random manner from the field.
He alleged that there is no standardisation of quality of polythene packets which are used to pack the 'chhatua' which leaves the food material contaminated. But the Government has turned a blind eye to the problem despite existence of a monitoring mechanism, he said.
The rights activists also pointed out that incidents such as malnourishment deaths in Nagada and Japanese Encephalitis deaths in Malkangiri are grim pointers to the fact that children are left out these schemes, he added.