Food minister inspects fair price shops in Burari

NEW DELHI: Delhi Food and Civil Supplies minister Imran Hussain on Tuesday conducted surprise inspections at some fair price shops (FPS) in north Delhi’s Burari, to check the efficiency of the functioning of e-point of Sale (e-pos) devices.

From the New Year, the Delhi government has started distributing ration to beneficiaries through e-pos devices at all 2,254 ration shops across the national Capital.

The new system has the mechanism for electronic verification of beneficiaries through authentication of Aadhaar card.

e-pos Devices have also been integrated with an electronic weighing machine to ensure correct weight of rations provided to the beneficiaries.

The Delhi government is also considering enhancement of margin money to the FPS owners by almost three times from existing Rs 70 per quintal to Rs 200 per quintal, in order to enable FPS owners to meet necessary costs of running FPS and also for enabling FPSS to be viable.

In this connection, Hussain on Tuesday met a delegation of Delhi Sarkari Ration Dealer’s Sangh. Office bearers of the sangh expressed their gratitude to the minister over the Delhi government initiative to increase the margin money to the FPS dealers.

The FPS dealers also requested for rationalisation of allocation to the FPS, in order to make sure that all FPSS run smoothly with reasonable margins to the dealers.