Bhubaneswar, May 16: The housing and urban development department has decided to monitor Aahar cheap meal outlets in the city and across the state to ensure quality.

To this end, the department will shortly install a central monitoring mechanism that will be supported and maintained by experts of the Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC). The OCAC officials will install the system at the office of the housing and urban development department in the state secretariat here.

“In order to ensure the standards of various parameters are met, CCTV cameras have been installed in the Aahar outlets. Moreover, it has also been decided to install a central monitoring mechanism at the housing and urban development for web monitoring of the Aahar outlets,” said the housing and urban development department in a letter to the OCAC general manager.

Earlier officials stationed at every outlet monitored the proceedings through the CCTV camera feed. The present plan would enable the officials sitting at the secretariat keep a close watch on all the Aahar outlets. 

The state government has recently opened 110 new Aahar outlets in all districts of the state, including one in Bhubaneswar that took the number of centres in the city to five. 

An official of the housing and urban development department said experts of the OCAC would be deputed at the department’s office to monitor the outlets live. “This will help ensure quality of food as well as avoid untoward incidents and corruption in and around the outlets,” said the official.

The Aahar outlets in the city operate at Capital Hospital, Master Canteen Square, Kalpana Square, Mancheswar, near Nayapalli Durga Mandap, Sum Hospital, Unit-II, Baramunda Bus Stand and Chandrasekharpur. The scheme, which runs with the support of corporate social responsibility fund, benefits nearly 9,000 persons every day in the city by providing them staple Odia food such as rice and dalma at Rs 5.

Each Aahar outlet provides 1,000 meals to the people every day from 11am to 3pm. “The city already had four outlets, which was benefiting nearly 4,000 people on a daily basis. With the new outlets, the number of beneficiaries every day has increased to 9,000,” said another official of the department.

The housing and urban development department earlier this year had also asked officials of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation to form a society to monitor activities under the cheap meal scheme in the city. The civic body had then formed the City Aahar Society to take care of the scheme. The society keeps an eye on the requirements at various Aahar outlets in the city, while the central monitoring mechanism of the housing and urban development department will monitor the quality of food served across the state.

“This is a good move by the state government and will help the administration check corruption at the outlets,” said Janani Maharana, a schoolteacher.