State facing shortage of 5,500 tonnes of ration

State facing shortage of 5,500 tonnes of ration
Yash Khajuria	7/6/2011 9:14:21 PM
JAMMU, July 6: Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CAPD) department is running under heavy shortage of 5500 metric tons of ration per month.  Officials said that at the moment state requires an additional monthly ration of 737 metric tonnes of rice, 254 metric ton of wheat and 68 metric tonnes of sugar for the migrants at APL rates, which has created lot of problems in the rural areas.  According to official sources the six-monthly requirement of food grains for nomadic families in the state is 3564 metric tonnes.  Peoples belonging to the Above Poverty Line (APL) and Kashmiri migrants are facing major problems as the shortage lies in their ration quota, due to the same they have to compromise with the insufficient ration supply to run their lively hood, somehow.  Most of the people also have complained about the not- receiving of ration on their ration cards allege that at most of the PDS shops, they are being harassed and made to wait for hours.  They also said that they have no clear cut information that how much the ration is allowed on their cards, people also alleged the ration depot holders of doing black marketing since they sold the ration at  their favorable prices to the needless and APL card holders too.  People have also said that one side the aggressive price hike in the daily use products have already made them to feel paralyzed due the limited scope of income.  However, still they are managing their budgets, but on the other hand the government is not providing the required ration to them in this condition it is a million dollars question that why government have given the ration cards to the public if they cannot provide the ration to them.  When contacted Minister for CAPD, Qamar Ali Akhoon said that the state government has sought sanctions from the Centre for additional grain quota for Kashmiri migrants and other population of the state.