Prisoners Engaged In Online Food Delivery For The First Time In India

Online food delivery businesses are changing lives in India and more so for the prisoners at Burail Jail, Chandigarh. For the first time in the country, the prisoners here have been inducted into the burgeoning online food order business. If you reside in Chandigarh and have a huge event planned where you’ll be needing to feed quite a number of mouths, all you need to do is visit the website chdmodeljail.gov.in, click on ‘food and other articles’ and you can choose from the list of yummy food items and have them delivered to your place. The food is prepared by prisoners and delivered to you by jail staff.

Reasonable prices

The prices they charge are pretty reasonable too compared to elsewhere. A sandwich is priced at Rs. 19 and that becomes Rs. 13 if you order at least 50, and of course, there’s a GST of 5%. There are a lot of dishes on the menu and more items will be added according to officials at the jail in Sector 51. Jail staffs have specified minimum orders for home delivery, which is a little but insignificant catch, which isn’t going to be a deterrent according to OP Mishra (IG, Prisons). “Business is good and it will pick up,” Tribune India reported him as saying.

“We ensure that the kitchen’s hygiene is maintained and rates of the products are kept competitive,” jail staff were reported as saying and added that all food items that are being sold are prepared by trained inmates under expert supervision. Inmates learn different types of work and many have taken a shine to making food said the jail officials.

Easier rehabilitation

“Those who make sweets in jail, for instance, can work at a sweet shop or can even open their own once out,” a jail official said. Mishra said that people who want to eat the food but not order it can just go to the jail canteen at Shopping-cum-Visitor Complex, Model Jail, Sector 51 and have anything they want. That’s not just it. An exclusive outlet is coming up soon in Sector 22 as well. This initiative is seen as a welcome move in prison rehabilitation and can very well set as an example for other prisons in the country. Seeing as online food delivery is becoming one of the leading consumer markets, this initiative is bound to be profitable.