Bhubaneswar: The housing and urban development department will bring in a monitoring system for all the nine Aahaar outlets of the city to ensure quality in the cheap meal service here.
The outlets provide meals to the people at a rate of Rs 5 per plate.
The department officials recently held a meeting to review the functioning of the outlets and came up with plans to ensure quality in the service. It was decided that the outlets would be monitored using online database management system.
"We were reviewing functioning of the outlets when the matter to put up a rigorous monitoring system was discussed. Accordingly, an online database management system will be introduced to enable the stakeholders to log on to the portal and put the details with ease," said an official.
Moreover, a central monitoring room will be set up at the state government level where the activities at the outlets will be monitored using closed-circuit television cameras. A digital display board will also be installed at each outlet, giving details about the number of tokens already issued against the ceiling.
At present, nine Aahaar outlets at Capital Hospital, Nayapalli Durga Mandap, Sum Hospital, Unit-II, Baramunda Bus Stand, Chadrasekharpur, Master Canteen area, Kalpana Square area and Mancheswar have been functioning in the city since 2015.
"We had started with four outlets and increased it to nine in 2016. Poor people are getting benefited from these outlets. At present, about 9,000 persons are getting the cheap meal from the existing outlets every day. We felt the need to ensure quality, for which a monitoring system is necessary," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
The government has also decided to grade each of the outlets based on the benchmark indicators. The outlets will also be rated based on their performances and the top three best performing outlet and its workers will get reward from the government.
"We want to instil a sense of competition among the staff members working at the outlets to get the best service," said another official of the department.
