By IANS,
Kolkata : A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee admonished officials of his department for the poor state of affairs, Food and Supplies Minister Jyotipriya Mullick Thursday announced a series of measures to check pilferage of rice and redressal of complaints.
“I will meet seven consumers, seven employee representatives and seven dealers every Monday for two hours,” Mullick said.
Two complaint boxes will be kept at the food department headquarters.
“Complaints from consumers will be kept in one of the boxes, which will be opened every 24 hours. The other box will be kept for receiving complaint from the departmental employees,” he said.
Banerjee expressed his disgust at the lack of vigilance and monitoring and asked the chief secretary to conduct a probe into the poor state of affairs in the headquarters during a surprise visit Wednesday.
She instructed Mullick to step up vigilance and improve monitoring to ensure quality foodgrain reached the masses.
Mullick said that good quality rice did not reach the consumers due to pilferage.
“Twenty percent of the ricegrain gets stolen and is replaced by poor quality of the foodgrain while being transported from the Food Corporation of India godowns to the distributor. Again when it is transported from the distributor to the dealer, 80 percent of the rice is pilfered and replaced by poor quality of the foodgrain. So while the weight remains the same, the end consumers get poor quality of the foodgrain,” he said.