Hyderabad: The Telangana state government has taken a serious view of the failure of the civil supplies department in distributing rice quota for PDS beneficiaries in some districts during Dasara under the pretext of having technical issues with e-PoS machines.
Civil supplies minister Etala Rajendar said such incidents would bring disrepute to the state government. The minister was speaking after reviewing the work at the civils supplies department with officials at Secretariat on Saturday.
Mr Rajendar said technology should be used to ensure transparency and check irregularities in PDS distribution but not to trouble the beneficiaries.
The minister said the company with which the department had entered into an MoU for procurement of e-PoS machines failed to meet the supply deadlines. He asked officials to ensure that such problems do not crop up again.
Officials informed the minister that e-PoS machines were introduced in GHMC limits on a pilot basis last year, which helped the department check irregularities in PDS system and ensure subsidised essential items reached genuine beneficiaries with biometric facility.
For this reason, they had decided to extend the e-PoS system to entire state and placed orders for machines.
Mr Rajendar directed officials to release last month's rice quota to beneficiaries who were missed due to the technical issues.
It was also decided to procure 27 lakh metric tonnes of 'sanna biyyam' (fine quality rice) to supply for students in government hostels at a cost of '8,500 crore.
The minister said the government would consider increase the number of ration shops to meet the demand and he will take up the issue of increasing ration dealers commission with the CM soon.
