SHILLONG, May 2: A review meeting was on Tuesday held at the Headquarter of the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP), India, in New Delhi to assess various technology-driven initiatives undertaken as per the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs department, Government of Meghalaya, and the UNWFP.
The meeting was chaired by Minister-in-charge of the department, Comingone Ymbon, and was attended by Commissioner and Secretary of Consumer Affairs department Pravin Bakshi, Country Director, India, Elisabeth Faure, Deputy Director Eric Kenefick and Unit Head of Social Protection and Supply Chain of UNWFP India, Ankit Sood.
The meeting reviewed various initiatives undertaken as per the MoU such as introducing Grain ATM (Annapurti) in Meghalaya, improving Aadhaar seeding, usage of electronic Point-of-Sale (e-POS) to ensure transparency and accountability, capturing all FPS GPS coordinates for route optimisation and tracking of movement of food grains across Meghalaya, mainstream data analytics in PDS monitoring system for data-driven decision making, alternate storage mechanism to minimise storage loss, and prepare strategic plan and way forward for the department for the next five years.
It may be mentioned that the UNWFP has developed a tracking system for the state of Meghalaya to monitor the movement of food grains in real time.
The Food Civil Supplies & Consumers Affairs department and the UNWFP India have also conducted IEC campaigns on grievance redressal for building awareness among the people on the feedback/complaint mechanism.