Punjab has been permitted to construct a state-of-the-art warehousing facility to store 4.2 million tonnes of grains, the largest-ever storage capacity being created by any state in a single financial year.
Speaking to the media, after laying the foundation stone of the Rs 23-crore ‘Anaaj Bhawan’, a composite office building of all wings of the food and civil supplies department, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Food and Civil Supplies and Information Technology Minister, said that Punjab, the granary of the country, purchases 24 million tonnes of grain annually, which is even higher than the largest global export countries of Canada and Russia, that export 21 million tonnes and 20 million tonnes respectively per year.
He said, being the largest producer of grain in the world, puts an onus of responsibility of scientific storage and transportation of the grains to the end user in the larger interest of the country.
“The Union government has permitted us to go for scientific storage of wheat and Punjab has already initiated construction of warehousing facility for 4.2 million tonnes. It would be the largest-ever storage capacity being created by any state in the country,” said Kairon.
Speaking about the plans to bring transparency in the working of the department, Kairon said that after kerosene, now any citizen of the country would be able to track the movement of vehicles carrying PDS and other grains right from the store to the PDS outlets.
He said that the transparency brought in kerosene distribution had a salutary effect. Kairon informed that on the suggestion of all oil companies, the tankers carrying kerosene have been given a distinct blue reflective colour so that any attempt of pilferage by them could be detected by general public.
The minister informed that each kerosene truck has been put on GPS-enabled devices, that can track the movement of trucks. Any deviation from the sanctioned route could be tracked on GPS inviting punishment for the transport company.
“Anybody can access the website and feed the user name ‘kerosene’ and password ‘transparency’, to track the movement of the vehicle. For atta dal vehicles, the user name would be ‘attadal’ and password would be ‘transparency,” he added.
