By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma on Friday informed that the Government is currently preparing the ground work to roll out the National Food Security Ordinance, 2013 in the State which aims to provide 5 kg of food grains per person per month at subsidised prices.
“A time of three weeks has been set for preparation of the list of households who would be the beneficiaries,” Dr Sangma said while talking to newsmen after a Cabinet meeting here on Friday.
The Chief Minister informed that the programme would cover 76.7 per cent of the population in the rural areas and 63 per cent of the population in the urban areas.
He, however, admitted that the Government is fully aware that it cannot achieve the target by including only the beneficiaries under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TDPS) in the newly launched programme.
Keeping this in mind, the officers have been asked to come up with a mechanism to achieve the set target, the Chief Minister said.
“We have asked our officers to prepare different slabs by referring to the annual income of the family. By doing this, they would be able to bring more families under this new programme,” Dr Sangma said.
He also said that they would be referring to the Socio-Economic Census while preparing the list of the beneficiaries.
“After finalizing the list of beneficiaries, 15 days would be kept aside for claim and objections,” the Chief Minister said, adding that this exercise would be followed by issue of the ration cards.
“We would give two months to complete the process of issue of ration cards,” he added.
Dr Sangma stated that as a special step, a female would be named as the head of the family in the ration card.