The electronic point of sale (e-PoS) project of the Civil Supplies Department to supply rice under public distribution system at fair price shops became fully operational across Telangana on Thursday with the installation of state-of-the-art Android machines linked to weighing machines that were run by bluetooth.
Barring 212 shops in interior areas of Asifabad and Adilabad districts that had connectivity problems, the e-PoS was completed in all the 17,000 shops of the State, said Civil Supplies Commissioner C.V. Anand.
He told a press conference on Thursday that the project took off on a pilot basis in March 2016 in 1,540 shops of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits on the standard Linux machines.
Android machines
Then, the Android machines on rent of ₹ 1,499 per month per device were introduced in 800 shops in Mahbubnagar in April last year. In the next 10 months, they were extended to all other districts in a phased manner.
Explaining the features of the project, Mr. Anand said the machines greatly resolved malpractices by shop dealers.
The fingerprints of both dealers and customers were saved in the machines. The Aadhaar details of customers were also linked to the machines for Aadhaar enabled payment systems and delivery of ration to any of the member of the beneficiary families.
Great savings
The introduction of machines had saved 2.15 lakh tonnes of rice worth ₹ 578.91 crore from misuse as the dealers were forced to record closing balances. On an average, about 20,000 tonnes of rice was saved monthly. Otherwise, they used to show nil closing balance and sell the stock in black market.
