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Punjab government floats tenders for delivery of wheat flour to 1.83 crore beneficiaries
Punjab government invited tenders for delivery of wheat flour to about 1.83 crore beneficiaries of NFSA. under NFSA, beneficiary currently gets wheat at ₹5 per kg per month, which will be replaced by flour
The Punjab government on Monday invited tenders for delivery of wheat flour to about 1.83 crore beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
A state government spokesperson said that the tenders have been floated by the newly formed Punjab State Cooperative Marketing Society Limited for the inclusion of delivery services and listing of flour mills for grinding of wheat.
On assuming power in the month of March, chief minister Bhagwant Mann announced to start door-to-door delivery of wheat or wheat flour to the beneficiaries giving them an option to choose.
“To reduce the economic burden on the NFSA beneficiaries and ensure they get monthly wheat flour, the initiative has been taken by the state’s food and civil supplies department by launching the home delivery of wheat flour,” said a state government spokesperson.
It may be mentioned that under the NFSA, the beneficiary currently gets wheat at ₹5 per kg per month, which will now be replaced by flour.
Each beneficiary is given 5 kg flour every month, helping beneficiaries save time and also resulting in an annual saving of ₹170 crore to the beneficiaries that goes into grinding of wheat.
The entire distribution information will be available to the department online on a real-time basis which will be helpful in overall supply chain management, thereby preventing any glitches.
Payment of ₹2 per kg can be made through various digital modes like BHIM, BharatPe, Paytm and Google Pay.
With the commencement of flour distribution, each family of four will get 20 kg of flour per month, which will be easier to store.
Highlighting the benefits of the service, the spokesperson adds that the beneficiary would no longer be required to wait in long queues outside ration shops and give up their day-to-day work leading to a loss of wages.
He informed that for the first time, an SMS service is being launched to inform the beneficiary in advance about the scheduled time of home delivery of wheat flour.
This is for the first time that continuous distribution of wheat flour would continue throughout the year on a monthly basis against the earlier practice of giving wheat every quarter of the year. Also, in contrast to the current situation when wheat distribution was restricted during March, April and May to check the re-sale of public distribution wheat back in the mandis when wheat procurement was underway.
Elaborating on the state-of-the-art procedures, he said that each grain of wheat from source (godown) to destination (beneficiary) will be detected using the latest techniques of the proposed system such as bar code, CCTV, GPS, biometric authentication with POS devices, etc.
