COIMBATORE: The state municipal administration minister SP Velumani on Monday launched the distribution of special Pongal gift hampers and cash incentive of Rs 2,500 to rice card holders in the district.
As many as 10.11 lakh card holders will avail the benefit in the district and as of 4 pm on Monday, the hamper was distributed to 68,000 people.
The minister said that the state government has allotted a sum of Rs 269.83 crore–Rs 252.96 crore to distribute Rs 2,500 per family and Rs 16.87 crores to distribute gift hampers – for Coimbatore district alone.
“At a time when the public is yet to recover from Covid-19 pandemic, the gift hamper and incentives will help them to celebrate the festival,” he added.
The hamper will have a kilogram of sugar and rice each, a full sugarcane, 20 grams of cashews and raisins each and five grams of elaichi.
“This year, the state government has increased the dole amount from Rs 1000 to Rs 2500 and instead of two pieces of sugarcane, a full cane was given to the card holders,” said an official from the District Supply Office (DSO).
To prevent crowd in front of the ration shops, the workers had distributed tokens to the card holders at their doorstep to accommodate 200 people a day, the official said and added that hampers will be distributed till January 12 and in case if someone could not get the hamper on the allotted day, they could get it on January 13.
Though tokens were distributed to the beneficiaries, time to collect the hamper was not mentioned.
One of the beneficiaries from Puliyakulam M Somasundaram said that he was waiting at the ration shop since 9am and collected the hamper only at 1pm.
“I am a mason and I had taken half day leave to get the ration products. But, now, I have no option but to apply for leave for a full day. If only the officials had planned properly, such inconvenience could have been avoided,” he said.
“Since biometric system to distribute the hampers may be time consuming, the government restored its previous method of distribution – where hampers will be given after scanning their smart ration cards,” the official said.
“Earlier, when we were distributing ration products by scanning smart cards, we managed to attend to 300 to 400 people a day. Going by that number, we are confident of distributing the hampers to about 75% to 80% in three to four days,” he added.
While the number of Covid-19 cases have started to come down there are chances of a rise in cases because of such gatherings at the ration shops, said another beneficiary R Sherin.