SHILLONG: The Meghalaya government has, in sync with the one nation one ration card policy, introduced the e-POS (electronic point of sale) system on trial basis to streamline the public distribution system (PDS) in the state.
The e-POS system is part of the Fair Price Shop Automation System (FPSAS), which has been designed and deployed to bring about complete transparency in PDS transactions among beneficiaries and fair price shop (FPS) dealers.
The system focuses on driving authenticated transactions in order to reduce leakages and pilferage.
Officials from the department said that a meeting was held recently where the state food and civil supplies minister stressed on the need to introduce the one nation one ration policy which allows states to borrow additional funds.
The one nation one ration card policy also relies on the use of Aadhaar to uniquely identify beneficiaries and hence stress has been laid on the need to push for Aadhaar enrollment in the state.
The respective deputy commissioners have also been directed to undertake Aadhaar enrollment on a camp mode and enroll the FPS dealers and National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries, including the head of the family, at the FPS level when beneficiaries lift their monthly foodgrains.
According to officials, 60 fair price shop dealers have been trained under the FPS automation project, while the training of 4739 FPS dealers is under way.
It was also informed that 3160 e-POS devices have reached the state, of which 1589 machines have been delivered to the FPS dealers.
Meanwhile, some FPS dealers said they were given the e-POS machine last month and that they have been acquainting themselves with the entire system.