World Food Program to study Punjab wheat storage facility
Darpan News Desk IANS, 04 May, 2022 10:06 AM
Chandigarh, May 4 (IANS) A team of the World Food Program (WFP) on Wednesday started a visit to Punjab to understand the process of procurement, testing and transportation of wheat to Afghanistan so that a similar procedure can be adopted by it.
State Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister Lal Chand Kataruchak said the five-member team of Sandro Banal, Filippo Zunino, Stephanie Heard, Amit Wadhera and Shruti will be visiting Amritsar to take a first-hand assessment of how long term storage of wheat is undertaken in Punjab, without deterioration in its quality.
Terming the recognition by the WFP for preserving the foodgrain by the state a matter of pride, the minister said Punjab, the food bowl of the nation, has been feeding the nation and now the grain produced in Punjab is feeding people abroad also.
It was also creditable that the western nations are now looking towards India to study preservation techniques for foodgrains and it speaks volumes of the progress made by the government of Punjab in this regard, he added. Senior officials of the state government and the FCI will be accompanying the team, he said, while assuring full cooperation to the team.
In a separate communication by the Ministry of External Affairs to the Department of Food and Public Distribution of the government of India on April 27 it had been conveyed that "WFP is highly satisfied with the quality of 10,000 metric tons of wheat provided by India to Afghanistan as humanitarian assistance".
This quantity of wheat had been moved from Punjab to Afghanistan via land route through Pakistan.
The transported wheat had been stored in PUNGRAIN steel silos of 50,000 metric tons capacity near Amritsar.
Jaitu Member of Legislative Assembly Baldev Singh joined Punjabi Ekta Party on Thursday, a day after he quit the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over national convener Arvind Kejriwal “dictatorial tendencies”.
Asserting that the days of "khichdi politics" are over, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, says that the proposed mahagathbandhan is an "alliance of opportunists".
Over three lakh drug addicts were treated in Punjab in 2018 and more than 63,000 people are currently being treated, out of which 25,000 are heroin addicts, a top police official said on Tuesday.
Six crore tablets of buprenorphine (combined with naloxone) were consumed in the state in 2017. A report by Punjab’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) indicates that the medicine has emerged as an addiction.
