The Assembly Committee on Women Empowerment of Meghalaya Legislative Assembly said that more than 57,000 ration card applications are pending in the state since 2016.
The Chairperson of the Assembly Committee Dr. M Ampareen Lyngdoh said that the committee found out that a total of 57,083 pending applications of which 11,108 are in East Khasi Hills alone remained unattended since 2016. "We have impressed upon the food and civil supplies department to speed up and ensure all pending applications should be processed at the earliest," said Dr. Lyngdoh.
Meanwhile, the Assembly's Committee on Women Empowerment on Friday asked the state government to reconsider the rates for COVID-19 tests as well.
The suggestions were made during a meeting convened by the CWE chairperson and Congress MLA from East Shillong, Dr. Ampareen Lyngdoh with officials from the health department and food civil supplies and consumer affairs department in the city here.
The issues related to the implementation of the Meghalaya Health Insurance Scheme (MHIS) and the various schemes of the Government of India under National Food Security Act (NFSA) vis-à-vis the impact of the COVID-19 on the people were discussed.
This also came after the state government had recently issued a notification which exempted BPL families from payment for COVID-19 testing and treatment.
"We have requested both these departments to immediately look into the urgency at which we need to ensure that people of the state do not face further hardships as because of the lockdown and post lockdown period till today's livelihoods are still very challenging in Meghalaya. Thousands of people have come back to the state and left their jobs in other states even though those individuals remained to be out of these important schemes. Therefore, the MHIS and NFSA are very important aids for the people of the state," Lyngdoh told media.
