Punjab To Install E-Pos Machines In All Fair Price Shops Across The State

Move Aimed At Ensuring Transparency And Accountability Besides Eliminating Pilferage

5 Dariya News

Chandigarh 20-Aug-2017

The State Food and Civil Supplies Department is in the process of acquiring Point of Sale machines to complete the end-to-end computerization under National Food Security Act (NFSA).Giving the details, a spokesperson of the Food and Civil Supplies Department said that the machines were handheld devices that allowed Aadhaar authentication at the moment of distribution, ensuring that the proper beneficiary receives their allocated ration. The PoS machine also has a scale, which allows for proper measuring which ensures that the beneficiary receives their full amount of ration. Additionally, these PoS machines allow real time location information, allowing the department to track the movement of grains from Storage godowns up to the receipt of ration beneficiary at the Point of Sale. All such information allows for greater transparency and accountability in the scheme, effectively eliminating the chances of pilferage, and increasing the management capability of the department.The spokesperson further revealed that the device related to the computerization of operations at the Fair Price Shop where Aadhaar was the basis of authentication of the beneficiary at the time of food grains delivery. All Fair Price Shops (FPSs) will be equipped with PoS terminals for the purpose of authenticating/verifying beneficiaries before commodity distribution. One crucial feature of the process is that the closing balances were updated in database through all PoS transaction from FPS.

PoS terminal with in-build finger print scanner was specially designed to address Public Distribution System (PDS) and all Aadhaar based transactions with Standardization, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Certified Bio-Metric Authentication. It was based on Charge Coupled Device (CCD) finger print and comes with connectivity options like GSM/GPRS, CDMA and Ethernet. Apart from this, POS supports interfaces with all types of payment gateways and Aadhaar Server with related logical interfaces for Magnetic stripe reader and Smart card reader for Aadhaar Authentication. Divulging the salient features of e-PoS, the spokesperson said that it had Touch Screen TFT LCD, Virtual Keypad on LCD, QWERTY Keypad, Build-in Magnetic Swipe Card Reader, Smart Card Reader/ Contactless Reader, Bluetooth, High Performance STQC Certified Optical Sensor, Finger Print Scanner, In-built Speaker for announcements and Inbuilt GPS. Likewise, the services provided through e-PoS application included delivery of wheat through online Aadhaar authentication of ration card holders, sale of PDS commodities, cashless transactions and creating awareness. Highlighting the benefits of scheme, the spokesperson said that it would go a long way in creating information visibility of supply chain, which will reduce diversion besides ensuring transparency in the movement of wheat from De-Centralized Procurement (DCP) godown to the Point of Sale, generation of delivery order, truck challans, receipts enabling tracking of stock movement from DCP godowns to FPS/ Point of Sale besides obtaining up-to-date statements of stock lifting and available stock at various stock points.