The Tripura government has announced a Rs 233-crore package to deal with the fallout of the lockdown.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, law minister Ratan Lal Nath said a cabinet meeting was held on Tuesday where the government decided to provide free ration to different groups of people.
According to the public distribution system (PDS) records, Tripura has 5.79 lakh “poor” families, including 1.09 lakh families under the Antyodaya Annapurna Yojana (AAY) scheme and 4.7 lakh below-poverty line (BPL) families. “Our state government, in a cabinet meeting, has decided to provide ration free of cost for the next one month to all BPL and AAY beneficiaries. This time, we have decided to provide the same benefits to 50,000 people though they are above poverty line (APL),” Nath said.
He added that the government had earlier announced free ration for 15 days. The benefits were revised and doubled on Wednesday. The AAY beneficiaries will get rice for Rs 35 a kg.
Nath said around 25 lakh people in BPL and “priority household (PHH)” categories and two lakh people in APL category would also benefit by the initiative. For this, the government will spend Rs 7.22 crore.
“In the cabinet meeting, we also decided that under the Rs 233-crore package, students in primary and elementary schools will be given take-home food under the midday meal scheme, pregnant women and lactating mothers will be given food. We have also covered around 40,000 construction workers under this scheme who will be given Rs 1,000 monthly for the next three months that will be credited to their account in direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode,” Nath said.
The government has also decided to provide free ration for the next seven days to 1,500 urban homeless and destitute people across the state who were being provided cooked meals for the past few days.
The rations include rice, soyabean, eggs, spices, mustard oil, potatoes, onions and the like. “The tea garden workers will also be covered under the package. We have asked all brick kiln owners to ensure ration for their workers till the end of the lockdown,” Nath said. The secretary of the Opposition CPM, Gautam Das, wrote to chief secretary Manoj Kumar on Wednesday, saying in many tribal villages of Tripura, poor villagers had mortgaged their ration cards to money lenders. As a result, he alleged, actual ration card holders were being deprived of free ration.
“In hills, plains and urban areas, the poor are facing extreme difficulties in collecting essential commodities as they have no money to purchase. The government should think of giving them cash assistance so that they can purchase essential commodities,” Das wrote.
