Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 24: Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, today chaired a meeting to review the functioning of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Department and implementation of electronic Public Distribution System (e-PDS) project in Jammu and Kashmir.
Appreciating the FCS&CA Department for its performance in ensuring uninterrupted supply of ration to the consumers even during the difficult prevailing situation in the Kashmir, the Chief Minister underscored the importance of PDS in ensuring availability of food-grains to the public at affordable prices, enhancing the food security and serving as a safety net for the poor.
Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali, Financial Commissioner Planning and Principal Secretary to CM, B B Vyas, Secretary, FCS&CA, Shafiq Ahmed Raina, Secretary, Information Technology and Technical Education, Mohammad Saleem Shishgar, Directors, FCS &CA, Kashmir, Tasaduq Jeelani and Jammu G S Chib besides other senior officers were also present in the meeting.
During the meeting, Minister for FCS&CA presented a detailed overview of the functioning of the department.
The Minister enumerated some of the major steps taken by the department for bringing transparency and streamlining the entire food-grain distribution chain including issuance of fresh ration cards, digitization of data, sanctioning of 4388 new Fair Price Shops, introduction of electronic weighing scales, linking ration tickets with Aadhaar, tracking made mandatory through GPS installed on commodities transporting vehicles, toll free helpline No 1967, vigilance and monitoring committees constituted at village level to monitor distribution of food-grains/K-oil among others and quarterly issuance of food-grains.
The Minister also highlighted that following the Chief Minister’s intervention, the department was able to take over the store from FCI at Nagrota with a storage capacity of 5000 MT after 45 years with 95 kanals of land.
The Chief Minister sought status regarding shifting of food depots from the core are of the Srinagar city to some other location on the periphery to help decongest the area.
During the meeting, the Chief Minister was also given a detailed presentation on the e-PDS implementation in the State by Oasys executives. It was informed that implementation of e-PDS in the State will guarantee food security for the vulnerable and poor, deliver higher quality of services to citizens, accountability and traceability and entire management online.
The Chief Minister noted that manual processes related to PDS operations especially at the Fair Price Shops (FPS) level leads to diversions as it is difficult to monitor actual sale at this level in a transparent manner.
The Chief Minister observed that the solution lies in e-PDS through end to end computerization so as to have complete transparency and accountability in allocation of commodities to shops and tracking distribution against allocation.
The Chief Minister was briefed about online transaction through Aadhaar and OTP system, offline transaction through local e-PDS database, billing compliance through SMS.
It was given out that PoS will remove manual intervention in the PDS supply chain. Through these devices the entire completed transaction involving commodity, quantity and price will be electronically registered on the central server and Management Information System (MIS).
It was decided that initially the system will be implemented in 10 Fair Price Shops in the State on pilot basis.
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