Public-private partnership ensures effective supply of food items in Gurugram

Gurugram: Taking into account the huge resources involved in the distribution of food items among the disadvantaged sections in Gurugram, it was decided to set up a public-private model during the lockdown period.

Corporates in Gurugram along with certain private citizens collaborated with the Gurugram public authorities like Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and Gurugram Police to undertake this massive exercise.

Combination of human resources along with state-of-the-art technology has ensured that 1.40 lakh material of cooked meals and 10,901 dry ration packets of food items is dispensed from March 27 to April 9, 2020. On an average, 60,000 families are being fed on a daily basis and the target is to increase it to one lakh families.

Use of technology has ensured that along with distribution of food items other aspects like transport management, relief intelligence gathering and communication strategy are well implemented. Technology has also helped the district administration to now use it further to monitor stray animal behaviour to prevent attacks on humans due to starvation and tracking mental health challenges.

The integrated command and control centre that has been recently inaugurated has resulted in Geographical Information System tracking.

The enormity and difficulty in the task has also resulted in creation of hierarchical system where there is a specific job description assigned to each individual. Some of the important posts are emergency operation centre commander, integrated command centre controller, data managers, zonal heads, motor transport manager, helpline managers and support staff.