In a first for the State, the Alappuzha district administration is planning to interlink via an online system all the ration shops in the district and to track the movement of essential goods to these shops using Global Positioning System (GPS) devices.
The project, which is intended to do away with black marketeering and hoarding of goods intended for the Public Distribution System (PDS), is in its initial planning stages, according to District Collector P. Venugopal.
A review meeting of the PDS here on Tuesday suggested that the project could be launched on an experimental basis in Cherthala and Chengannur taluks. Later, it could be extended to another four taluks selected by the district administration.
The National Informatics Centre will be approached to develop the necessary software to link the ration shops so as to enable the authorities to keep an eye on the stocks delivered from the Food Corporation of India godowns to PDS retail centres while the GPS devices will be used to track the movement of the goods from the godowns to these ration shops, thus doing away with the possibility of the goods being diverted to the black market.
At present, only Meghalaya, Orissa and Chattisgarh employ such techniques, that too quite successfully, officials said, adding that complaints of malpractices in the PDS had prompted them to think of a method to do away with hoarding, interference by illegal agents, creation of fake stock documents and black market sales of PDS goods.
Officials will seek the cooperation of ration shop dealers as well to make the stock monitoring system fully functional. Even otherwise, the project can bring in some sort of transparency to the system using the GPS tracking system, officials said.
The project could be ready for launch in a couple of months, they added.
