Disruption in ration distribution system hits BPL families in P’kula

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, November 29

Ration card holders and BPL families in Panchkula are unable to procure ration as the e-public distribution system through the newly launched point of sale machines is not working properly. A private company Vision Tech has been given the charge of this system, which seems to be incapable of handling the load.

Over 4, 40,000 such families live in Panchkula and there are 154 fair price shops in the district. Each shop is visited by over 200 people on a daily basis. Aadhaar numbers were linked with ration cards to bring in transparency and ensure fair distribution. They are required to show their Aadhaar card and an entry is made in the machine that produces a form-cum-receipt.  With the server being down, these forms are not generated and people are not able to procure ration.

District Food and Supplies Officer Megha Kanwar said, “The problem is that the lone server crashes repeatedly   overloaded as 145 such machines are in operation in Panchkula district alone and 9,000 in Haryana.” She added that there are 25 lakh such families in the state and a permanent solution has to be found for their convenience.

A fair price shop owner in Kalka said, “The problem started after the first 2- 3 days. The machines rarely work. The public is fighting with us and the ration is piling up. The engineer comes and fixes the machine but it crashes again and we are told that the server is down at the head office.”

The system was inaugurated by CM Manohar Lal Khattar on November 1. tt was previously run as a pilot project and then implemented across the state. Experts say  earlier glitches were not taken care of and the company that was given the project is technically weak.