Bhubaneswar: The State Urban Development Authority (SUDA) and  Mission Shakti has come up with a collaborative step to initiate three state-of-the-art pickle manufacturing units at three different districts namely Baripada, Berhampur and Dhenkanal to procure the needs of the Aahaar centers across the State.

There are 166 Aahaar centres in the State which have been solely run and managed by the women SHGs. The Ahaar Centers provide a standardized meal like plain rice and dalma along with pickle in Rs. 5 to the needy urban population. For every meal it needs around 10 gms of pickle which means 1 MT per day. So with an estimation all the 166 Ahaar Centers will require around 300 MT pickles per annum.

The SHGs have been purchasing the pickles from the open market. The State government has proposed this initiative to converge the potential of women entrepreneurship through Mission Shakti SHGs by encouraging and motivating the women to manage the semi-mechanised pickle manufacturing units. For this program the Government has selected three SHG groups namely Maa Durga SHG at Baripada, Bighneswar-II SHG at Berhampur and Mahasangam Mission Shakti Area Level Federation (ALF) at Dhenkanal  to run the fully mechanised pickle centers and meet the retirement  of 300 tonne pickle every year for Aahaar centres.

These three SHG units will supply pickles to the Aahaar centers of 10 districts. These Mission Shakti SHGs have signed an MoU with Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI-CSIR), Mysuru on technology transfer of pickle making process. The president and secretary of the groups had already been given training at the CFTRI in March to get a proper knowledge on pickle making process.

-OdishaAge