From this paddy season, foodgrain vehicles in Punjab to have tracking system

“The revised transportation policy is now in sync with the custom milling policy for procurement and milling of paddy…It mandates, for the first time ever, the installation of tracking systems in every vehicle used for transportation of food grains procured by the government,” a government statement said.

The Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs has already initiated the process of empanelling companies, which provide vehicle tracking systems, and making the existing ‘Anaaj Khareed Portal’ compatible with them.

“On the other hand, the Labour Policy aims at ensuring wider participation of labour associations by abolishing the prevailing labour and cartage policy,” it said.

The existing Labour and Cartage Policy, prevailing for the past many decades, was perceived by many to favour the participation of contractors since it involved providing labour and transportation services by the same person. “But the new policy has completely delinked labour and transportation services thereby providing increased opportunities to labour associations to directly participate in the tender process, which will directly increase their incomes by removing the contractor margin,” said the statement.

The government said that every effort has been made to make the system completely transparent by removing certain existing provisions, which were sometimes open to abuse and often caused frivolous litigations. “An important step in this regard was taken by completely eliminating the submission of manual documents during the tender process, as many tenders were often rejected on account of minor discrepancies,” it said.

In consonance with the government’s policy to encourage new entrepreneurs, the policy has, for the first time, allowed participation in tenders without any requirement of past experience.

The requirement of submitting physical details of registration certificates of trucks and Aadhar numbers of labour, which often resulted in rejection of bids due to minor discrepancies and subsequently caused frivolous litigations, has also been done away with.

Elaborating further, the statement said that the policy has limited the size of the tendered cluster to 50,000 metric tonne. This in turn is expected to reduce the requirement of vehicles and labour in a cluster, thereby increasing competition.

Earlier there was no yardstick for determining the size of a cluster, which varied from as low as 5000 MT to more than 2 Lakh MT. Both the policies have now made the Deputy Commissioner the chairman of the tender committee, he added.

OTHER DECISIONS

Meanwhile, in another decision, the cabinet gave the approval to fill up 359 vacancies of direct recruitment — 200 of agriculture development officers, 150 agriculture sub-inspectors and nine of laboratory assistants — in the department of agriculture and farmers welfare.

The Cabinet also decided to fill 80 posts of Civil Judge (Junior Division)-cum-Judicial Magistrate through Punjab & Haryana High Court by bringing it out of the purview of Punjab Public Service Commission, Patiala. This decision will help to expedite the process of recruiting new Judicial Officers to ensure speedy dispensation of work at the Subordinate Courts.

It also gave ex-post facto approval for continuation of the services of service providers (497 veterinary pharmacists and 498 Class-IV/Safai Sewaks) already working on contract basis as a stop gap arrangement in 582 veterinary hospitals, for a period of one year, from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023.

The Cabinet also approved the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), proposed by PSPCL, to improve the quality and reliability of power supply to consumers by strengthening its distribution system.