ONGOLE: Prakasam district authorities are planning to start three exclusive nutritious food item malls through the Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA), and this will be the first-of-its-kind initiative in the State.
Under the MEPMA, there are around 11,400 self-help groups through which women are doing various activities in the district. Most of the SHG women are experts in making traditional nutritious food items.
In the nutritious food month competitions held in October, many food items prepared and displayed by the SHG women got tremendous applause from the public. Then onwards, district authorities have been toying with the idea of establishing food malls here at the district headquarters on a pilot basis.
Recently, MEPMA officials met with the district collector and on the basis of his approval and suggestion, they discussed their plans with the Ongole Municipal Corporation (OMC) commissioner.In this connection, the officials went for a field visit and came to a conclusion that three MEPMA malls should be opened at various places in the city.
Depending on the response and public feedback they would further increase the number of malls. With this MEPMA malls project, authorities are aiming for two benefits.One is to provide better and constant income to the SHG women and the second one is to provide cheap and best nutritious food to the public.
“We have already decided to establish three malls at three different places, one at Rangarayudu Cheruvu area, another at Trunk Road and the other one will be opened near APSRTC Bus Complex area,” MEPMA project director A Krupa Rao said.
“Through this prestigious project we are planning to provide tasteful and good nutritious food items to the public. We are going to make available one variety of nutritious food packages everyday at these malls. After the evaluation of the project growth, we will increase the number of these malls in the city as well as in the district too. Cost estimations and allocation of lands are going on at a swift pace,” Rao added.