A two-member team of Ministry of Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, New Delhi, visited fair price shops in Tiruchi recently to study the implementation of e-Public Distribution System so as to share the best practices in other States and Union Territories.
Accompanied by S. Gopalakrishnan, Principal Secretary and Commissioner, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, the team members - Pankaj Mishra and Sh. Satendra Kaushik, Consultants of the Ministry, - checked the point of sales machines, which are used to make entries on all transactions including allotment, opening stock, closing stock, details of consumers attached to particular fair price shops, mobile phone details of consumers, sales for a day, quantum of commodities sold and corresponding entries. They also checked whether the Short Messaging Service (SMS) sent by the fair price shops reached the targeted customers or not. They also met a number of consumers to get their feed back on e-PDS.
The team members also checked Aadhaar seeding, online allocation, supply chain automation and the grievance redressel mechanism.
K.C. Ravichandran, Joint Registrar of Co-Operatives, Tiruchi, told The Hindu that the team had expressed happiness over the successful implementation of the project.
All 1400 fair price shops in the district were fully digitalised recently as part of the e-PDS project. Moreover, the district had received the State-level award for the effective implementation of the project. The project was first implemented in Ariyalur and Perambalur districts on a pilot basis. It was then extended to other districts.
Mr. Ravichandran said digitalisation had improved the efficiency of PDS to a great extent. The card holders would get instant message the moment transaction was entered in the ration card. They could easily identify if someone was misusing the family card. Similarly, the common date centre would get transaction details simultaneously. Stock position, sales and all entries would be updated immediately.
