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Workshop on Right to Food

A workshop for two days on Right to Food was conducted by Right to Food and Work Campaign, West Bengal for the Right to food activists and the nominated members of Monitoring and Vigilance committee appointed by the Govt of West Bengal. The workshopwas held at Proggaloy, Barasat North 24 Parganas on 11th and 12th of March.

61 participants representing 16 districts of West Bengal were present for the workshop.
The workshop started with the study of the West Bengal Public Distribution System (Maintenance and Control) Order, 2013, which deals with issues of PDS and the role and responsibilities of stake holders and Monitoring / Vigilance committee.                                                       


 DDPS Dr. Aurobindo Ghosh
The morning session was interesting as the DDPS Dr. Aurobindo Ghosh shared the expected roles and responsibilities of the NGO representatives and civil society members in the Monitoring and Vigilance committee. He had to answer different questions on different problems on PDS raised by the participants. The participants in the workshop also requested the DDPS to speed up the formation of committee at the Block and Shop level and to focus on the distribution of PDS effectively.  At the end of the speech Dr. Ghosh assured the participants that he will help them with his fullest extent as it is his primary duty.
A.                                                                                                             
                                                    





Image: A. Question and answer session between DDPS and participants, B. Group discussin


B. 
In the workshop through discussions in different region based groups participants enlisted some specific problem on PDS in their region. It was decided that those problems will be forwarded to the respective authority for settlement. The members then worked on a survey questionnaire on two issues: namely, the effectiveness of the Government helpline and the implementation of Supreme Court orders in the PDS .The study will be conducted in the coming two months at 16districts, 50 blocks,114 shops and with 684 Beneficiaries.

The second day was dedicated to National Food Security Act which is about to be rolled out in West Bengal from South Dinajpur District on 1st April. 
There was a discussion on the manner in which the NFSA, an already weak act was being further diluted by budget cuts and policy changes. The issue of cash transfers and the Shanta Kumar Committee report recommendations were also discussed. The participants decided to take up the issues with the people through various awareness campaigns so that people get the right knowledge on PDS and other schemes as prescribed in the NFSA and get the benefits.
Some of the future action plans for the coming days and months are:
·         The activists will meet the respective DCFS and SDFS (i.e. District and sub-divisional controller of Food and supply) to pressurise them to conduct regular meeting of the vigilance and monitoring committees.
·         The activist will trace that whether the committee at shop, village,panchayet, sub-division, block or district level have been formed or not.  They will also keep tracking of regular fortnight meeting.
·         As a pilot project everyone will make 2 calls with two specific problems to the district helpline for PDS to check whether the help line number is properly working or not.
·         Within next two months they will conduct study the status of the ration shops in their area.
·         The Right to Food Campaign, West Bengal will organise number of awareness program like, street corners, cycle rally and rally with poster and handbills. A poster and hand bill will be produced centrally by the Campaign.

Group discussions

The proposed date for next workshop is from 8th to 11th May, 2015. The venue has been tentatively fixed as Kalimpong.


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