As many as 22.8 lakh families in the State have collected their ration supplies since the restoration of the normal working hours of ration outlets four days ago. According to official statistics, a record number of 8,34,672 ration card holders received their monthly allocations on Saturday. This was over twice the average supply count of nearly four lakh people a day.
As a result, 71,45,761 card holders, i.e. 77.82% of the total card holders, have collected their allocations for the month with a working day left. The corresponding rate on December 29 stood at 70%.
The disruption of ration supply due to the server glitch a week ago had threatened to derail public distribution system (PDS) and the unhindered distribution has brought much relief to the government. While teething issues were reported on the first day of resumption of normal functioning time on Thursday, no complaints regarding the e-PoS machines have been recorded ever since.
Food and Civil Supplies Minister G.R. Anil said State-wide inspections of the machines revealed that many ration dealers were using mobile connections that provided weak Internet connectivity. While rationing inspectors had been deployed across the State, technicians of the e-PoS manufacturers had been examining the devices, he said.
Replacing SIM cards
“SIM cards are being replaced wherever there were complaints of unresponsive machines. Both the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the State IT Mission have ascertained adequate server capacity,” the Minister said.
The department had fixed specific periods for distribution of ration goods in each district last week after the server failed to cater to the entire PDS network in the State at the same time.
