Old maladies haunt ePoS in PDS

Nellore: The much-hyped e-PoS (point of sale) system for preventing irregularities in public distribution system (PDS) has been a tough nut for officials to crack. The method aimed at preventing diversion of PDS commodities has failed to take off across the district and also has not yielded expected results wherever it was implemented.

The system has been a role model, which was pilot tested in Krishna district and was later implemented across the State, in a bid to save Rs 1,000 crore per annum to the exchequer that was being misappropriated by the dealers. The district administration started implementing the system a few days ago. The entire distribution process has to be fixed within three days but that wasn’t the case.

While it was planned to complete 80 percent of distribution on the first day and finish the rest in the remaining two days, only 65 percent of the essential commodities were distributed during the first three days. There are huge stocks of materials that are yet to be dispersed and ration card holders are under dilemma whether they would be received this month’s ration.

Iris and finger prints, play a key role in the system. Under the biometric authentication system, the quantum of essential commodities of each consumer is entitled to will be displayed. The consumer can draw the entire material at one go or in several spells and a slip will get generated on the quantum of essential commodities drawn, according to the procedure.

It would help record all transactions electronically, which enables real time accounts of opening stock, daily sales and closing stock. In turn, this would facilitate monthly allotment of stocks to the dealers based on the stock position and also facilitate monitoring and detection of fraudulent transactions.

Under the system, the beneficiaries are identified by Aadhaar and verified through iris and fingerprinting at the time of release of the goods. The objective of the programme is to ensure that only genuine cardholder, whose name is mentioned in the ration card can buy the subsidised commodities.

There are about 8.50 lakh ration cards in the district and essential commodities were being distributed through 1,879 fair price shops. After distribution of commodities that was kicked off in the month of March, around 35 per cent of cardholders, nearly 3.11 lakh are yet to receive the commodities. It is pitiable to note that commodities were only distributed to 45 per cent card holders in district head quarters.

Social activists blamed dealers and said that their negligence and unwillingness to follow new system was the reason for the failure of e-PoS. “Though the officials directed the dealers to open shops from 10 am to 5 pm, it was blatantly ignored by many dealers. They still followed old system,” said K Venkateswarlu, a social activist from Narayanareddypet in Nellore rural mandal.

Moreover, failure of servers due to limited access to internet, no-response from biometric system and others added fuel to the fire thus leading to incomplete distribution of commodities in a stipulated time.