Technical glitches cripple fair price shops in Telangana
Ration distribution takes a hit due to server issues, lower bandwidth in e-PoS machines
Nizamabad: Connectivity issues in the servers of the Civil Supplies Department (CSD) for the past 10 days have been a major cause of concern as both consumers and fair price shop (FPS) dealers are unable to carry out transactions. Similar issues have been reported from almost all districts in the State, but officials appear to be taking their own sweet time to resolve the issue.
As a result, long queues can be seen in front of FPS with the dealers issuing rice to card holders but the e-PoS (electronic-Point of Sale) machines consistently displaying ‘server busy’ notification. This has been essentially because of the lower bandwidth in the e-PoS machines that is unable to take the load of the CSD servers. This has led to tension between consumers and dealers frequently in the past 10 days, in some cases even attacks on FPS.
The CSD had selected Oasys Cybernetic Pvt Ltd to distribute e-PoS machines to FPS, but the machines distributed were 3G technology-based devices against the requirement of 4G, leading to connectivity problems, the sources said, adding that the problem had been persisting since December 5 when rice sale and despatch was taken up for 10 days.
Raghu, a food security card holder in Nizamabad, said: “I have visited several FPS in the town, but the situation is the same everywhere, with the dealers saying the server is down,” he said, adding that CSD officials should immediately attend to the problem.
Athimala Nagesh, State vice-president, Fair Price Shop Dealers Association, said the problem was a cause of inconvenience for both FPS dealers and consumers. He appealed to the officials to immediately address the server issues and upgrade the e-PoS machines.
State Ration Dealers Welfare Association president Battula Ramesh Babu, speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, said the State government had introduced e-PoS machines to check black marketing and diversion of grains from the depot. “However, due to poor signals and server issues, the dealers are unable to use the machine, particularly from 9.30 am to 11 am, forcing people to wait for long. I brought the issue to the notice of Commissioner of Civil Supplies V Anil Kumar as well as Chairman of State Civil Supplies Corporation Mareddy Srinivas Reddy several times but in vain,” he added.
Since e-PoS machines are linked with an iris scanner, weighing scale, and biometric Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), it is taking much time to distribute the ration.
Vangapalli Ravinder Rao, Mancherial District Fair Price Shop Dealers’ Welfare Association president, said they had been witnessing technical glitch in the e-PoS machines for a week, causing inconvenience to over two lakh food security cardholders in the district. He disclosed that the association had requested the government to extend the last date for distributing commodities.
The situation is no different in erstwhile Karimnagar and Medak districts. For the first time after the introduction of the e-PoS system, the system for a week had completely collapsed due to technical problems, said a ration dealer in Kalwasrirampur mandal of Peddapalli district. Since ration would be distributed from 1st to 15th of every month, people were thronging ration shops who were later ending up accusing dealers of being responsible for delay.
Medak ration dealers rued that though they had started the distribution of commodities from the first week, they could not even complete half of the exercise until Tuesday. Gangisetti Ravindar, a ration dealer from Gajwel town, said he had started the distribution of rice from December 2, but he could not complete it even today.
Ravindar said they could make only few transactions since each transaction was taking not less than 15 minutes due to the server issues. Despite making several complaints to the call centre, the issue was not resolved and was leading to tensions between dealers and cardholders.
In Nalgonda district, technical glitches have led to delays at all FPS for the last one week. While over 250 cardholders usually avail ration at each shop, the number dwindled to around 50. Nalgonda Ration Shop Dealers Association president P Nagaraju said: “Without e-PoS machines, we are not allowed to sell rice and sugar to the cardholders,” he said, adding that the situation was the same all over the district, this despite bringing the issue to the notice of the CSD officials several times.
In Kothagudem district, the problem seemed to have been resolved on Tuesday. “We had an issue in carrying out transactions for a brief period on Monday evening and Tuesday morning. Now the e-PoS system is functioning normally, and we have delivered commodities to the public,” said Bhukya Sandeep, an FPS dealer at Bhadrachalam in Kothagudem district.
When contacted, Civil Supplies Minister Gangula Kamalakar told ‘Telangana Today’ that no such issue had come to his notice so far. He promised that he would take immediate action if needed after consulting the officials concerned on the issues being raised with regard to e-PoS machines.
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