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Faced with frequent technical snags in the public distribution system, the Food and Civil Supplies Department has urged BSNL to enhance its bandwidth capacity.
The demand was made at a meeting convened by Food and Civil Supplies Minister G.R. Anil and attended by officials of National Informatics Centre, State IT Mission, Keltron, C-DAC and BSNL here on Friday.
Speaking to mediapersons, Mr. Anil said BSNL, the internet service provider for ration distribution, had been directed to increase its current bandwidth of 20 mbps to 60 mbps immediately. The capacity will be further raised to 100 mbps from March 20.
Besides, the Hyderabad centre of NIC that provides technical support for the public distribution system has been directed to upgrade the AePDS software used to coordinate ration distribution to its latest version from April 1. The department hoped the two decisions will resolve the recurrent technical glitches to a large extent.
Steps will also be adopted to ensure ration dealers use the SIM cards of the fastest internet providers in their areas in the e-PoS (point of sale) machines.
Servicing machines
Mr. Anil added that a Statewide camp would be organised from April 1 to 30 to service all e-PoS machines used by the nearly 14,000 ration shops in the State. A help-desk system had also been launched to attend to complaints of malfunction. The users can contact the helpline numbers by dialling 7561050035 or 7561050036. While seven ration shops continued to distribute ration goods in the conventional manner, they will be brought under the e-PoS network within a month.
Wheat allocation
The Minister informed that the wheat allocation of 6,546 tonnes meant to be supplied among non-priority card holders in March has arrived and is ready for distribution. Besides, the ragi allocation of 991 tonnes sanctioned by the Centre in place of the slashed wheat allocation will be distributed in powdered form next month onwards.
Jaya rice variant
The State is also likely to resume the distribution of the Jaya variety of rice through ration shops from April 15. While Andhra Pradesh had suspended production of the popular variety, its cultivation was resumed following a request from Kerala.
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