After successfully piloting the mobile governance (M-Gov) application for tracking rice delivery by millers in 2011-12 kharif marketing season, the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department is all set to integrate this application with accounting process for accurate reporting.
“The modified M-Gov application will be made operational from November 16 and all SMS’s on rice delivery will be carried out in the revised format,” said Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Secretary MS Padhi.
In the pre-revised format of M-Gov, there was no provision to track paddy procured from one district and delivery of the resultant rice in another district. If a rice miller from Sambalpur procured paddy from Sonepur and delivered the rice in a depot in Sambalpur, there was no way to link the rice to the district from where the paddy was procured, he said.
Besides, there was no provision to link the rice delivered by a miller in October 2012 to the paddy procured in the prevision kharif marketing season (2011-12). In the new format, all rice delivered after September 30 will be deemed as the product of 2012-13 kharif marketing season (KMS).
Now, the SMS for rice delivery will be based on the rice acceptance (AC) note issued by the rice receiving centre (RRC) in-charge of the Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation (OSCSC). The SMS will contain a four digit AC note number to be allotted by each RRC of the corporation.
The present system of AC note booklets with centralised preprinted numbers of the OSCSC will be done away with from the current KMS, a circular issued by the Department to all district collectors said.
The revised SMS format will indicate the quality of rice (boiled or raw), state agency account or levy account (of rice miller), date, month and year of delivery, agency involved in the procurement, quantity of rice and code of the depot where the rice was delivered.
Since the introduction of M-Gov application on February 13, 1,006 rice millers have sent information through SMS for delivery of 18.70 lakh tonnes of rice to 390 depots across the State, Padhi said.
Meanwhile, rice millers engaged in paddy procurement have registered their mobile with the Food Supplies Department. Mobile phone numbers collected through the millers registration process have to be used for sending SMS to 9437000359 of the department. SMS sent from other mobiles will not be accepted by the system.
With the advent of smart phone, application for rice delivery has been developed to make the process easy and one can download the M-Gov application from the department’s website, he added.