15 Ahmedabad NGOs have joined hands to fight corrupt system.
For Farida Sheikh, who lives in Gomtipur, every day is a battle against her fair price shop that refuses to give her the proper quota of monthly food grains and kerosene.
Sheikh is not alone in her fight; scores of people from nearly 45 villages in Ahmedabad district are fighting a similar battle against a corrupt Public Distribution System (PDS).
Fifteen NGOs from Ahmedabad have joined hands to form Ann Suraksha Adhikar Manch (ASAM), which has been carrying out a month-long campaign against corrupt practices in the PDS.
On Wednesday, this campaign culminated into the formation of a platform- Lok Darbar- for distressed people like Farida and the urban poor, to voice their issues against the PDS.
General manager of commerce, Gaurang Bhatt; Supreme Court appointed member of the advisory committee, Gagan Sethi and Chandrika Gala, member of Ann Suraksha Yog were the panellists who discussed and analysed the problems of people like Farida.
"Since last one month, we have been carrying out different awareness and educative programmes like puppet shows and discussions in different areas of Ahmedabad. This open forum is a part of our month-long campaign," said Altaf Ghoghari, coordinator, ASAM.
Ghoghari said, "We have carried out signature campaigns across all the urban poor areas and have collected details of ration shops, their licence numbers and number of complaints against them. All this data will be sent to Urmila Patel, food regulator of Ahmedabad and to the secretary of the food and civil supply department."
He added that questions raised by urban poor during Lok Darbar have also been attached to these letters and will be sent to the concerned authorities on Thursday.
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