Par panel likely to submit report on One Nation One Ration Card, housing scheme in Sept

NEW DELHI: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour is not very enthused over the progress made on two schemes to provide food and rental housing to migrant and unorganised workers and is likely to submit its recommendations in the first week of next month, according to a panel member. The representatives of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on Monday briefed the panel about social security and welfare measures for inter-state migrant, unorganised and informal sector workers.
A member of the committee on the condition of anonymity told that the two schemes, One Nation One Ration Card and Affordable Rental Housing Complex (ARHC), have not taken off as expected. "We are firming up our recommendations and observations. The final report is likely to be submitted by the first week of next month."

Under the ARHC, the government had come up with two models -- renting out unoccupied houses constructed by the Centre and states (on public private partnership) and secondly encouraging private and public sector to build houses on vacant land for renting out those to migrant and informal sector workers.

The member said that both the models under the ARHC scheme are in the making and did not make much progress as Punjab is the only state which has come up with a memorandum on this initiative.

Under the initiative to provide food to migrant workers, the member said that around 2,000 ration card holders were the beneficiary of the One Nation One Ration card initiative in July this year. There are about 81 crore ration card holders in the country.

The member said that there are many technical issues that are hampering the progress of the One Nation One Card scheme and the panel would give its recommendations under its report to be submitted next month.

The One Nation One Ration Card scheme has covered 24 states and union territories so far and states like Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal are out of its ambit, the member said adding this what the ministry officials briefed about the panel on Monday.