Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCS&CA) and Tribal Affairs Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali today directed FCS&CA department to ensure that the sale of food grains is undertaken through Point of Sale (PoS) machines in all FPS and government food outlets to bring transparency and accountability in Public Distribution System.The Minister further directed for employing modern electronic weighing machines for distribution of food grains besides imposition of complete ban on usage of traditional kandas FPS and government food outlets in the state.The Minister issued these directions while reviewing the progress made for implementation of electronic Public Distribution System (e-PDS) in the state.Additional Secretary FCS&CA Jugal Kishore Anand, Director FCS&CA Kashmir Nisar Ahmad Wani, Joint Director, FCS &CA, Mansoor Aslam Chowdhary, Deputy Directors of FCS&CA, Assistant Directors of all the district, officers of NIC besides other senior functionaries of the department were present in the meeting.The meeting discussed various components of e-PDS system including online allocation of food grains, customized supply chain management, installations of POS machines, geographic information system (GIS), vigilance monitoring committees (VMC), ration cards seeding with Aadhaar, online grievance redress portal etc.
The Minister was informed that PoS machines have been installed in 19 districts except Baramulla, Leh and Kargil. He directed the concerned officer to complete installation of PoS machines in the left-out districts by 20th of this month.It was further informed that till now, 5624 PoS machines have been installed across the state out of which 5551 are operational and Rs. 4.45 crore released to complete the various components of ePDS.380 PoS machines in Rajouri, 103 in Ganderbal, 128 in Samba, 374 in Budgam, 481 in Srinagar, 183 in Udhampur, 273 in Kathua, 193 in Reasi, 191 in Poonch, 166 in Bandipora, 494 in Anantnag, 285 in Kulgam, 293 in Doda, 173 in Kishtwar, 159 in Ramban, 371 in Kupwara, 157 in Shopian, 328 in Pulwama and 831 in Jammu have been installed.The Minister was informed that two dedicated control rooms have been set up at Directorate Offices both in Jammu and Srinagar to facilitate dealers and officers of the department in operating the PoS machines.While discussing the progress on implementation of Supply Chain Management (SCM) in the state, the Minister directed to hold special training programmes for employees of the department for smooth transition to SCM systems.
He also asked the department officers to ensure that on implementation of the said system, all allocation and movement of ration is done through supply chain management system.He further directed NIC to ensure implementation of Ration Card Management System (FCMS) within next 15 days.Besides, he directed for early distribution of 12-digit consumer code to the beneficiaries and for strict monitoring of ePDS project implementation. He asked to ensure to ensure the biometric attendance in all district godowns and offices of the state.During the meeting, Zulfkar informed that the government has extended the validity of existing ration cards up to December 2019 and the officers have been directed to ensure 100 percent distribution of new ration cards among the consumers by the end of this month.