NEW DELHI, June 17, 2016
Digitisation still a far cry for fair price shops
Teeming beneficiaries:The Capital has 2,534 fair price shops, with nearly 72.8 lakh people using them.File Photo
A pilot project in which 42 shops in the city were installed with ‘point of sale’ machines is being withdrawn
: The Delhi government’s flagship project of digitising Fair Price Shops (FPS) to usher in transparency has failed to take off. Point of Sale (PoS) devices in all FPSs in Delhi were to become operational by this month, but leave installation, the government has not even finished preparing its Request for Proposal (RPF).
‘Showcase city’
As per the plan, Delhi was to be the ‘showcase city’ for the Centre’s project of putting in place a biometric system at all fair price shops in the country. But, despite floating three tenders, the State government failed to rope in any company to carry out the project. This is despite the fact that Delhi is one of the easiest cities to implement the project as it has 100 per cent Aadhaar seeding. The government did not have to spend anything extra in getting the biometrics of ration card holders.
Pilot project
The Capital has 2,534 FPS, with nearly 72.8 lakh people using them. By now, all of them were supposed to distribute essential commodities like wheat, rice and sugar through fingerprint or iris detection of beneficiaries. However, even the pilot project in which 42 such shops were installed with PoS machines is now gradually being withdrawn. According to a senior official, at present, only 37 FPS have functioning PoS devices.
Confirming the report, Amjad Tak, Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Food and Supplies Department, told The Hindu that the office was working on a fresh RFP. “Installing PoS devices in FPSs is the most important project for us; a lot of time has already lapsed. The original proposal had some major flaws, because of which bidders were not forthcoming. We are now working on a new RFP which will be out by next month,” he said.
Owing to repeated delays, the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDC) came in to “re-visit” the project, and is now co-drafting the proposal. “The new RFP is going to be a robust one with a detailed note on the process of system integration as the company awarded with the project will have to install, operate and even maintain all the devices. A tender (the fourth one) will be floated soon after,” he added.
Criticism from CAG
Even the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India has criticised the failure to implement the project. In its latest audit report of the Delhi government (for the fiscal 2014-15), it observed that PoS machines for verification of the eligible beneficiaries and disbursement of food grains were installed in only 42 out of 2,300 FPSs.
It also highlighted problems in the pilot project. “FSO (Circle 15, North district) intimated that even the PoS machines installed in the FPSs were not working efficiently as these were not user-friendly, had poor battery life and problems of mismatching of fingerprints, and poor network.”
Delhi is one of the easiest cities to implement the project as it has 100 per cent Aadhaar seeding