The Registrar of Co-operative Societies has launched a ‘lorry tracking system' using mobile phone in Tiruvallur district on trial basis to keep a tab on the movement of essential commodities from Civil Supplies Corporation godowns to fair price shops.
There are over 500 fair price shops in Tiruvallur district.
Instead of opting for Global Positioning System (GPS), the Co-operative Societies have provided BSNL SIM cards to their movement assistants attached to the lorries.
“It is being done on a trial basis for a month. We have opted for mobile phone, since it is cheaper than GPS. Moreover, we do not have fixed set of lorries to transfer stocks. To maintain vigil, we will set up a Monitoring Centre soon,” Jatindra Nath Swain, Registrar of Co-operative Societies told TheHindu.
Officials in the Co-operative Societies said: “We have chosen this district as it is notorious and stock diversions are rampant. We can monitor the movement hour-wise, day-wise and date-wise. As a next step we will launch it in Krishnagiri. Besides, we have also started providing specific numbers to each stock meant for a particular shop. If there is diversion or pilferage it can be found out easily.”
The Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) had been using GPS well over two years in Krishnagiri and Tiruvallur districts.
“In the first level, we monitored stock movement from FCI godowns to TNCSC godowns. For the last six months, we have started tracking vehicles and stocks from our godowns to fair price shops. Even if the driver makes an unscheduled stop for 10 minutes, we get an alert. It is hard to quantify the savings,” said TNCSC Managing Director M. Veerashanmugha Moni.
