VIJAYAWADA: A majority of the fair price shop dealers in the State have decided not to provide ration on credit to card holders whose bank accounts have not been Aadhaar-enabled, despite the instructions to the contrary from the government.
“If we have to give credit to a card holder, we have to spend Rs 31 per each card holder. It will be very difficult for us since 40 per cent of the beneficiaries allotted to a fair price shops belong to this category. The civil supplies department is turning a deaf ear to our problem,” State ration shop dealers joint action committee chairman Kagitha Konda says.
They do not want to give ration on credit because they do not know when they would get back their money The State government too is silent on this count. The complaint of the FPS dealers is that they have to give credit even though they get the supplies only on payment of the amount. The traders have no problem with the Aadhar-seeded ration cards as the e-PoS machines would be able to read the cards and debit their bank accounts to the extent of their purchases. E-PoS machines at fair price shops have not been generating slips from Thursday for the card holders that are not Aadhar-enabled. This has resulted in only 59,000 people taking ration across the State in two days.
Kagitha Konda said that the dealers were not against the decision of cashless transaction at fair price shops. But, officials of civil supplies department did not assure dealers when they will be paying back the amounts.
There are as many as 28,445 fair price shops in Andhra Pradesh and 1,30,95,582 ration card holders. District collectors are visiting fair price shops in the State for the last two days and are instructing dealers to provide goods on credit for people without aadhar-linkage.
Commissioner for Civil Supplies Corporation, Budithi Rajasekhar instructed district officials to ensure cashless transactions at all the fair price shops.