Beneficiaries of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the State will not be able to get essential commodities through “proxies” in the near future when the Civil Supplies Department instals fingerprint recorders at fair price shops.
Under the new system, every time the benefit is availed, one of the beneficiaries enumerated in the family card should visit the ration shop concerned and get his or her fingerprint recorded.
The proposed system would be in place in a few months, said a senior official of the Civil Supplies Department. All the 34,772 shops will have the devices. Only a week ago, the Department floated bids for procuring the recorders. It is planning to award the contract by August.
At present, the shops have been provided with PoS machines, which serve as billing units at the time of distribution of essential commodities. Besides, the machines are used to update the stock of the commodities at the shop level. Family cardholders get text messages on their registered mobile numbers for every transaction.
The latest move is part of the stipulations prescribed in the context of the implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA). Even though the Centre’s advice pertains only to priority household (PHH) cardholders, the State government has decided to cover non-priority household (NPHH) cardholders too, as it has adopted the Universal PDS model. There are about 99 lakh PHH cards, having around 3.3 crore beneficiaries, while the rest falls under the NPHH with approximately 1 crore cards and 3.4 crore beneficiaries.
Asked whether the new system will eliminate instances of fair price shop staff billing for commodities that are not bought, the official explained that on the installation of the recorders, printed receipts will be issued to the beneficiaries at the time of every transaction. This will take care of false billing, which is being resorted to by sections of the staff. Besides, the beneficiaries could block those commodities that they did not want to buy by logging on to https://www.tnpds.gov.in, the official said adding that there was also a provision for unblocking the commodities.