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Bio-metric supply at FP shops

Project to be implemented on a pilot basis in 100 fair price shops
Nizamabad: To prevent high-level irregularities in the Public Distribution System (PDS), the Nizamabad district administration has decided to introduce bio-metric system for supplying essentials to ration card holders. On a pilot basis, around 100 fair price (FP) shops will be adopted and the bio-metric system will be introduced to distribute essentials to the beneficiaries.
As per the new system, any one of the family member of ration cardholder could get the commodities by registering their thumb impression on bio-metric machine.
It is an open secret that subsidy rice and kerosene supplied through PDS to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families is being diverted to the black market in large quantities.
District collector D. Ronald Rose has directed the civil supply authorities to complete seeding of Aadhaar cards with ration and introduced bio-metric system to supply essentials to card holders.
Reportedly, Nizamabad district stands second in Telangana with respect to seeding of ration cards with Aadhaar.
Usually, the civil supplies department allots 8,309 MT rice, 311 MT sugar and 1,224 kilo litres of kerosene as monthly quota to the 1,330 ration shops in the district. Speaking to this newspaper, an FP shop dealer said that they were forced to surrender bogus cards and adopt bio-metric system. “Earlier, we supplied commodities to around 2,000 cards, now it is come down to mere 1,200. It is not a profit making business now.” he said.
After weeding out of bogus ration cards” he said. FP shop is now onwards is not a profit making business, he opined. “We habituated for maintaining of bogus ration cards, diversion to black marketing and feeding bribes to the officers concerned so far, but now we should follow the changed rules” he lamented.
To prevent irregularities in PDS, the civil supplies officials had weeded out bogus ration cards in the district. Now they are planning to introduce the bio-metric supply system. It is ultimately prevent the irregularities in ration shops.
Speaking to this newspaper, an official of civil supplies department said that they sent indent requiring 100 bio-metric machines for ration cards. Two FP shops in each mandal and more shops in municipal towns will be provided bio-metric machine on pilot basis, he said. Thumb impression of the ration cardholders will be collected FP shop wise and the distribution will be started by November onwards, he explained. Ration cards number is more than the population of district and it is streamlined with serious efforts of the district administration, he added.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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