FCI taking innovative steps to ensure quality of grains
New Delhi: The Food Corporation of India (FCI), which is the nodal agency for implementing food policies of the Centre, is taking several innovative steps to ensure the quality of grains procured at its different depots situated across the country, including national capital.
Though FCI is entrusted to accomplish its mandated responsibilities that include procurement, movement, storage and distribution of food grains under NFSA as well as other welfare schemes to ensure food security to the nation, the government's trusted food supply arm has again proved its importance during the Covid-19 pandemic by providing food to every countryman through different welfare schemes of the Centre.
Talking to Millennium Post, FCI's Delhi region general manager Shraddha Sharma said that the depots of FCI have a very robust mechanism to maintain the stock of grains at its six different depots, including Mayapuri and Shakti Nagar.
"The Mayapuri depot, which is spread in sprawling 35 acres of area, has a total covered storage capacity of 82,730 MT and the premises also have a RCC Silo, which is a first-of-its-kind to be built in India with 16 bins having a storage capacity of 21,300 MT. The RCC silo was operational till 2003," Sharma said, while taking stock of the operations of the depot such as unloading, stacking, loading, fumigation, etc. The FCI's Shakti Nagar depot is spread over 10.42 acre and has the storage capacity of 17,236 MT. Sharma further said that FCI is continuously using technologies in its operations to become more transparent and capture real time data.
"A procurement portal has been developed using minimum threshold parameters to bring transparency and work as a single window for the farmers. Also, all the depots are working in depot online system (DOS) to automate, facilitate and effectively manage its depot level operations pertaining to the procurement, storage and movement of food grains within a depot by managing all associated transactions," she said, adding that real time information provides accuracy in inventory and improves visibility on quantity, location and age of available stock.
