Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 14: Minister for Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution (CAPD), Transport, Chowdhary Mohammad Ramzan today said that the Government has decided to open 6000 new public distribution centres in Jammu region to expand the PDS network to inaccessible areas.
The Minister was addressing a meeting of senior officers of Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CA&PD) and Legal Metrology Department convened to review the stock and supply position in Jammu region.
The meeting was attended by Director, CA&PD, G.S. Chib, Managing Director JKSRTC, J.S. Tandon, General Manager, R.S. Jamwal, Deputy Controller, Legal Metrology, Manoj Prabhakar, Joint Controller, Amar Singh, besides district heads and other officers of the department.
The Minister asked Director CA&PD to indentify the places for opening new depots by giving preference to the inaccessible and uncovered areas.
He said that the step has been taken to ensure better services to consumers at their doorsteps, adding that it will also help in employment generation.
Reviewing the status of home delivery of LPG, the Minister directed the concerned to ensure 100 percent home delivery to eligible household in district headquarters and major towns.
Stressing for effective enforcement of laws, the Minister asked the CA&PD authorities to conduct random market checks to curb menace of overcharging, adulteration besides putting in place an effective monitoring mechanism to ensure accountability in Public Distribution System.
The Minister asked the officers to strictly adhere to the fresh guidelines set to further streamline the public distribution system. He asked the officers to supply adequate food grains and essential commodities to far-off areas of the state as per requirement.
The meeting informed that all steps have been taken to resume the supply of sugar to the rationees from the month of September as per the past practice.
The Minister asked the Director CAPD to personally check the quality of ration being received from Food Corporation of India (FCI). He said that the Government of India has also sanctioned sufficient quota for Kashmiri migrants.
Later, the Minister also reviewed the functioning of Transport Department which was attended by Transport Commissioner, Sanjeev Verma, Regional Transport Officer, Jammu, Arvind Kotwal, Deputy Transport Commissioner, M. L. Raina, besides ARTOs of Jammu province.
The Minister directed the MVD authorities to take strict action against traffic violators and make efforts to further streamline the working of the department and ensure hassle free public transport in the city and its peripheries. He called for strict enforcement of Motor Vehicle Act and asked them to intensify the campaign to create mass awareness about road safety rules to bring down the graph of accidents in the state.
The Minister asked the concerned officers to work with synergy to ensure prompt delivery of transport service to people. He stressed upon them to organize orientation courses for drivers to fully acquaint them with the traffic rules as most of the road accidents occur due to human error. He underlined the need to launch special drives especially in accident prone districts.
The Minister said that due to heavy rush of pilgrims in Jammu which is the base camp for halt of yatries, the department has decided to run Radio Taxis as an additional transport facility to the pilgrims. The meeting was informed that almost all the records have been computerized and steps are afoot to accomplish the computerization task soon.
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