A review meeting was held at the India headquarters of the United Nations’ World Food Programme in New Delhi today, with Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister Comingone Ymbon holding discussions with the UNWFP Country Director Elisabeth Faure, among others.
The meeting was held to assess various technology-driven initiatives undertaken as per the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Meghalaya and World Food Programme India.
These include introducing ‘grain ATMs’, improving Aadhaar seeding, use of electronic point of sale (e-POS) machines to ensure transparency and accountability, capturing all fair price shop GPS coordinates for route optimisation and tracking of movement of food grains across Meghalaya to prevent diversion, use mainstream data analytics in the Public Distribution System’s monitoring system for data-driven decision making, alternate storage mechanism to minimise storage loss and prepare strategic plan and a way forward for the department for the next five years.
The tracking system developed by the UNWFP monitors the movement of food grains in real time. Information, education and communication (IEC) campaigns on the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme have also been conducted. ONORC allows migrant workers claim rations from any fair price shop in the country.
Going forward, a strategic, comprehensive plan will be developed for the next five years with a special focus on enhancing nutrition security and making the PDS robust and transparent, a press release stated today.
