Jammu Tawi, April 03 (KINS): Union Secretary, Food & Public Distribution, Sanjeev Chopra, has hailed as commendable efforts made by the Department to make the Public Distribution System hassle-free and at the same time stressed the need for immediate integration of e-Pos with the Weighing Scale.
He asked the Department to build adequate capacity and be ready for implementation of Route Optimization Plans and for effective participation in Smart PDS when these are rolled out by the Government of India.
Commissioner Secretary FCS&CA, Zubair Ahmad presented an overview of the functioning of the Department with stress on new initiatives. He informed the Union Secretary that there are 24.80 lakh ration card holders in J&K covering a population 96.74 lakh beneficiaries with cent percent Aadhaar Seeding.
He said the Aadhaar Seeding has facilitated removal of more than a million bogus beneficiaries. He said the Public Distribution System in J&K is built around a strong and widespread network of 6735 ration shops including 2104 govt shops and 4631 private outlets. He said ePoS devices have been installed in all the sale outlets across J&K and the distribution process is fully automated with Aadhaar authentication rate of 93.85% in transactions. He said 6393 of PoS machines are working in an online mode.
Regarding One Nation-One Ration Card (ONORC), Zubair said that till last month 39,125 ONORC transactions were made, taking J&K to 10th position in the country. He said also during this period 13,50,513 portability (Inter-District) transactions were made. Zubair said that 8,94,891.33 MTs of food-grains were distributed in 7 Phases spanning April 2020 to December 2022 under Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY, besides the distribution made under NFSA and Non-NFSA to eligible beneficiaries.
Commissioner Secretary said various initiatives have been taken to transform FPSs. These include signing of MoU between the Department of FCS&CA, J&K and CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd to leverage ePoS devices to deliver CSC services and a hike in FPS Commission has also been ordered.
He said proper implementation of Supply Chain Management has remained the area of focus and the Department has been able to achieve implementation of 98% of SCM, despite difficult terrains, internet issues, peculiar situation, lack of requisite IT infrastructure & electricity issues.
Earlier during his 2-day visit to J&K, the Union Secretary visited Fair Price Shop at Panchayat Dhok Wazirian in tehsil Nagrota on 2nd April, 2023 accompanied by Commissioner Secretary FCS&CA, Director, FCS&CA Jammu, General Manager, FCI and other officials of the Department.
