Construction at fever pitch as launch of ‘Aahaar’ nears in Odisha capital

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Mar 23:

Construction of dining halls is underway at breakneck speed in Bhubaneswar for the launch of the much hyped ‘Aahaar’ scheme recently announced by the Odisha government on April 1.

Food consisting of rice and dal will be provided to 4, 000 people at five outlets in the city at the highly subsidised rate of Rs 5 per meal under the scheme, also known as bhaata, dalma scheme in local parlance.

The five outlets will be located at Capital Hospital, Baramunda bus stop, Bus stop near railway station, near Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) office and in front of Mancheswar police station.

While 500 meals a day would be provided at Baramunda and Mancheswar, the rest three centres would serve 1000 meals a day.

Five places have been identified and the construction of the dining halls at these five places are in full swing by BMC. Food would be cooked at a different place and only be served in these dining halls.

The size of these halls, however, is surely going to be an issue.  As the operating hours of these houses have been fixed from 11AM to 3 PM and the dining halls can’t accommodate more than 100 people, chaos will be anear certainty at these places.

Also, the authorities are yet to devise a method to keep track of the number of people who were served food.

While the BMC will take care of hygiene at these places, Public health department will facilitate drinking water and CESU will ensure uninterrupted power supply. The Government will use hoardings to publicise the centres among the denizens.

This program will be conducted in partnership with NALCO.  The expected price of a meal has been calculated at Rs 20. While NALCO will provide Rs 15 towards each meal served at these centres, the customer will need to pay Rs 5.

A MoU on this count was signed by the NALCO, BMC and voluntary organization Touchstone Foundation at the secretariat yesterday.