CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Department on Wednesday commenced the pilot project for home-delivery of essential commodities —rice, sugar, wheat, palmolein oil, and toor dal — under the Public Distribution System (PDS) for senior citizens and persons with disabilities (PwDs) in Chennai and nine other districts.
A minimum of 10 fair price shops across two taluks in each district have been selected for the pilot study of this initiative.
Apart from Chennai, the other nine districts included in the first phase of the project are Tirunelveli, Sivaganga, Dindigul, Ranipet, Erode, Dharmapuri, Nagapattinam, the Nilgiris, and Cuddalore.
On June 17, TNIE was the first to report on the government’s decision to roll out the project across the state.
According to official sources from the cooperation and food department, the door-to-door delivery project aims to cover cardholding families where the members are either below 18 years of age or 70 years and above. Cardholding families where all the members fall in the disabled category will also be covered under the scheme, sources said.
As part of the initiative, 10 ration shops in the southern zone of Chennai have been selected to serve around 650 ration cardholders.
PDS home-delivery initiative to benefit 15L ration cardholders
The selected areas are Velachery, Saidapet, Jaffarkhanpet, Nesapakkam, and surrounding regions. The commodities under the pilot drive will be delivered before July 5. The initiative, expected to be formally launched by Chief Minister M K Stalin in a week or two, will benefit 15 lakh of the total 2.21 crore ration cardholders across all 38 districts in the state.
The pilot study is designed to identify and address challenges in implementing the initiative, including transporting goods from ration shops to beneficiaries’ homes, number of houses to be covered per day, functionality of biometric and iris scanners, and public participation in the scheme.
On Wednesday, a minivan from a fair price shop in Velachery taluk loaded with PDS goods entered the residential areas near 100 Feet Road in Velachery along with officials from the civil supplies department and staff. The van was equipped with a weighing scale, a point-of-sale (PoS) machine, and the commodities.
For those unable to authenticate using biometrics, iris scanners will be used as an alternative. The ration shop employees weighed the rice and sugar in front of the beneficiaries and delivered the items to them. During the delivery in Saidapet, several residents gathered in front of the vehicles requesting commodities.
Particularly, those aged above 60 requested the staff to handover the entitlements during distribution. Similarly, in Velachery, a few elderly women who have three to four members in their ration cards said that they are the ones who usually visit fair price shops to purchase commodities and requested that the home-delivery be extended to them as well. However, officials clarified that the service is limited to select ration cardholders only.
S Velavan (72), a resident of Velachery, said he often struggles to cross the busy Velachery Main Road while carrying items like sugar and toor dal. “Many a time, I skip buying rice or wheat because it’s difficult to carry them home. With this new facility, I plan to opt for wheat instead of rice,” he said.
An official said, “To resolve issues related to biometric authentication, the fingerprint match threshold has been lowered from 90% to 60%, which has reduced the time taken for verification. At present, rice, toor dal, and sugar are weighed manually and delivered in loose form. Based on the progress in the implementation of the scheme, the government may consider providing these items in pre-packed packets, which would substantially reduce delivery time.”
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The pilot study will address challenges, including transporting goods from ration shops to homes, houses to be covered per day and functionality of biometric scanners