Not fair! Long walk for ration card holders

 

Koppal: In what could be described as sheer negligence by food and civil supplies officials, the department has been providing PDS commodities to ration card holders of some villages using an ‘alternative system’instead of opening new fair price shops. The card holders therefore have to walk for about 10 km to fetch rations from fair price shops.

 

According to officials of the food and civil supplies department, if the proprietor of a fair price shop dies or migrates to some other place, the shop will be attached to a nearby shop. 

 

Given the fact that this ‘alternative system’ has been putting card holders in trouble, a meeting held recently under the stewardship of food and civil supplies minister Dinesh Gundu Rao warned district officials to set right the anomalies at the earliest. 

 

There are about 441 fair price shops in Koppal district. Gangavati taluk has 131 shops followed by Yelburga taluk-117, Kustagi taluk-102 and Koppal taluk-91. Of these, the licenses of nine fair price shops have been cancelled for various reasons and the licenses of 12 have been suspended.  

 

The suspended licenses will be restored after a thorough inquiry but the cancelled licenses will not be given to the same person.  In such a situation, the department should take steps to issue licenses to others in the same village. Instead of doing this, the responsibility has been given to proprietors of other shops which are pretty far away.   

 

This has also resulted in shortage of foodgrains and other commodities, said sources.