The distribution of tokens to Public Distribution System (PDS) card holders, scheduled to begin on Tuesday, will start on Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the development said a day’s delay in distribution was because the Cooperation Department, which received the State government’s instruction on Monday night, had started printing tokens thereafter.
The Department here completed printing of 9.78 lakh tokens for as many PDS card holders on Tuesday morning and by the time it finished the tokens, the shops had closed.
The task of distributing the tokens took place on Tuesday afternoon and would be completed well before Wednesday morning for the staff at the fair price shops to distribute the tokens to card holders.
The card holders could use the tokens to buy commodities at the given date and time from the shops.
The Cooperation Department here printed the tokens for the 8.94 lakh card holders attached to the1,248 shops it managed, 70,211 card holders attached to the 103 shops that women self-help groups managed and the 14,000-odd card holders attached to shops run by the Karuppati Urpathiyalar Kooturavu Sangam (jaggery producers’ cooperative society).
The remaining card holders were attached to the shops run by the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation, which had a separate arrangement for printing the tokens.
After receiving the tokens, the fair price shop supervisors would fill the PDS card number, family head’s name, date and time for the card holders to go to the shops.
This arrangement, the government had said, was to prevent crowding at the shops.
The fair price shops would distribute the tokens until June 4 and start the commodity distribution from June 5.
