SHILLONG: The stock for Meghalaya under the open market sale scheme of the Food Corporation of India has started reaching and the government would lift the stock by making a payment of Rs 2250 per quintal of ‘Grade A’ quality rice.
Informing this here on Friday, Secretary of Food Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Department, Pravin Bakshi said the department is making daily payment for the FCI and lifting of the stocks will be done through government approved wholesalers.
Reiterating that there will be no shortage of food grain as through this scheme, the government will lift more than 1 lakh quintal of rice, he added that out of this, 10 per cent of the stock has reached Guwahati.
“Once the lifting is done, it would stabilise the open market,” he said.
As far as lifting of PDS is concerned, he said the distribution for April is done and it is being distributed through fair price shops while adding that the stock for May is also being lifted.
He also reiterated that under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, the government will provide 5 kg rice to the PDS beneficiaries for April-May-June free of cost along with one kg of pulses to each household. In addition, the government has also activated the price monitoring cell which takes the pricing in details everyday to ensure that there is no unreasonable escalation of prices of essential commodities.
Many East Khasi Hills MLAs are disappointed with the move of the state government for not allowing them to distribute rice to the people from government quota.
An MLA, who attended a meeting of all East Khasi Hills legislators with the chief minister recently, said that the MLAs had maintained that they would like to distribute rice from Rs 25 lakh which has been given by the government to supplement the shortage of rice provided by the Public Distribution System.
During the meeting, some MLAs suggested to the chief minister that instead of the government going to open market to procure rice, the MLAs should be given a separate quota to pick up rice from the FCI and the suggestion was supported by all MLAs as there is no rice available in the open market.
According to the MLAs, the chief minister in principle agreed to the idea and asserted that the chief secretary will work out the details.
However, Food and Civil Supply Minister, James Sangma refused to allot rice to the MLAs from the FCI.
The MLAs had said the Centre had allotted 11000 metric tonnes of rice to Meghalaya and all the MLAs are asking for mere 40 MT of rice for each MLA.
The MLAs also said that if they are given rice from the FCI, the price of per kg rice will come to maximum of Rs 25 with carrying and loading charges whereas they would be forced to pick up the same rice from the open market at a cost of Rs 30 per kg.
“If we buy from the open market, we will end up paying more and if we get from the FCI, we can provide more rice to the people,” the MLAs said, adding “We had planned that we will give rice free to the people,” the MLA said.
Stating that all the MLAs have money in their hand but are waiting for the government to give them the rice from the quota, the MLAs added that they cannot even go to the open market as there is no rice in the market and they cannot even bring rice from Kolkata and Delhi.
