Amid outrage over food scarcity, Centre to use surplus rice for sanitiser manufacturing
New Delhi/IBNS: The Centre on Monday informed that the excess rice in central godowns will be used in the manufacture of ethanol to keep up with the demand of sanitisers in the country, a move which might pave way for controversy as millions complain of starvation during the phase two of nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of novel coronavirus across India.
A meeting of National Biofuel Coordination Committee (NBCC) was held on Monday under the Chairmanship of Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, wherein it was approved that the surplus rice available with Food Corporation of India (FCI) may be converted to ethanol for utilization in making alcohol-based hand-sanitizers and in blending for Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme.
"National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 under Para 5.3 inter-alia envisages that during an agriculture crop year when there is projected over supply of food grains as anticipated by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, the policy will allow conversion of these surplus quantities of food grains to ethanol," a government statement read.
However, over the last weeks, there has been a huge controversy over reports that many people from the poor section of the society are not getting enough ration to meet their hunger amid the nationwide lockdown.
The report comes even as the godowns of the Food Corporation of India have been full.
At the onset of the lockdown, the government had promised that no one will remain hungry during this period and claimed to feed over 800 million poor people across the country.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that 5 kg of wheat or rice will be given to each person free of cost, with a kilogram of pulses for every low-income family, through the public distribution system (PDS).
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"No one will go hungry," the minister had promised at the time.
However, ration through PDS is available only to the ones having proper cards. However, several migrants are right now not carrying the ration cards where they are stuck.
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Besides, there are others who do not even own a ration card. According to reports, their number is around 5 million, owing to which experts have suggested that food under PDS be distributed to anyone who shows up.
The novel coronavirus has already claimed the lives of 559 and infected 17,656 so far.
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