Mudassir Ahmad
SRINAGAR: Amid implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the state, the consumer affairs and public distribution department has failed to monitor the quality of the food grains, thus raising serious doubts that sub-standard ration being provided to the people.
According to an official report, which says that there was no testing laboratory or trained manpower available with the department for conducting quality inspection of food grains thus raising serious doubts that poor quality ration was being provided to the people. As per the PDS (Control) order 2001, the representative of the department and the FCI should conduct joint inspection of stocks to ensure that quality of food grains conformed to the prescribed quality specifications.
As per the manual of the procedures, the department is also to conduct physical verification of all the stocks of central godowns, various sale and storage centres at the close of every financial year.
However, the report said that despite CAPD department having stated that regular annual physical verification of the stocks, the shortages/deterioration in stocks of sugar and rice remained un-noticed indicating that the physical verification had not been done properly over the years and the mechanism adopted in conducting physical verification of stocks in respect of these stores were faulty.
Crime Branch in J&K is also probing it and had conducted raids on FCI godowns in the Valley and has sent samples of food grains to laboratories to check whether sub-standard ration was being provided to the people.
Minister for CAPD department Chowdhary Zulfikar Ali had also admitted that government was not able to monitor the quality of the rice due to lack of such laboratories in the state.
“We only conduct the visual test of the ration by which we are not able to monitor the quality of the rice properly. I have raised this issue with the Chief Minister that there should be a scientific laboratory in the state which will check the quality of the rice being procured from the FCI,” Zulfikar had said. “Once the laboratory is established is the state, there will be a proper monitoring to check the quality of the ration.”
Further the report said that CAPD department had not maintained proper records at directorate level in Srinagar and Jammu. “Internal departmental reconciliation of dispatches made to each district was also not done. Non-existence of internal control to record transactions related to lifting, dispatches and distribution of food grains is fraught with the risk of misappropriation and frauds remaining undetected,” the report states.
