Awareness Programmes about vigilance squads in Ration Shops!
Posted on: 06/Mar/2020 2:56:29 PM
The Tamil Nadu State Government Department of Food has taken a decision to create awareness among the ration-card customers regarding the vigilance squads.
There are 35000 ration shops in Tamil Nadu State catering to 2.05 Crores ration-card holders for distribution of free rice and wheat and other items such as sugar at subsidized prices.
The state government of Tamil Nadu spends about Rs, 6000 Crores every year. Each ration card has up to 1200 cards.
The Food Safety Act was implemented in the state of Tamil Nadu during November 2016. Subsequently, In the year 2017, special vigilance cells were formed for each ration shop. This vigilance squad is about 7 members, including the head and all of them are card holders buying from the relevant ration shop!
This vigilance squad meets every month to analyse and review whether all ration cardholders received the right quality and quantity of ration items, whether the shops open at the right time, etc. In case maloperations are detected, complaints will be submitted to the local panchayat/district/state vigilance squads.
The vigilance commissions operate under the leadership of Tashildars at Panchayat/circle level, At the district level, the vigilance squad acts under the leadership of the district collector. At the state level, he vigilance squads operate under the leadership of the Food Distribution Commissioner.
It is also gathered that the cooperative Union officials who manage these ration shops have nominated their well-known acquaintances in the vigilance squads in order the maloperations in the ration shops dont come to light!
However, this is not generally known to most of the ration shop buyers! Thus, the vigilance squads do not pay any attention to the complaints and nor do they take any corrective action! Thus, these complaints do not reach higher officials of the food department! A large number of complaints regarding this have been received now by the higher officials in the Food Department.
Subsequently, the Tamil Nadu State Government has decided to initiate awareness programs among the ration-card public about the vigilance card for their recourses.
