Okays home delivery of flour to 1.54 cr beneficiaries

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab cabinet on Monday approved the home delivery of wheat flour to 1.54 crore beneficiaries. The supply of flour to the beneficiaries will start from October 1. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by chief minister Bhagwant Mann. Under the new scheme, a home delivery service will introduce the concept of mobile fair price shops (MPS).

Accepting the proposal put forward by the state’s food and civil supplies department for home delivery of flour under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) scheme, the state has been divided into eight zones and the service shall commence in one zone in the first phase, in two zones in the second phase and in the remaining five zones in the last and third phase.

A special purpose vehicle (SPV) will be created by MARKFED that will deliver flour to 1.5 crore beneficiaries of the NFSA scheme in 40 lakh households for the delivery of 8.7 lakh tonnes of wheat or flour (72,500 tonnes annually). In the scheme, 5 kg atta or wheat will be supplied at a cost of Rs 2 per kg to each beneficiary.

According to a spokesperson from the CMO, the government will offer the option of home delivery of flour to the beneficiaries. “Any beneficiary who wishes to physically collect his entitlement of wheat from a fair price shop (FPS) will have the option to opt out through a web application. The delivery cycle of distribution shall now be changed from quarterly to the monthly cycle. The MPS will be a transport vehicle preferably fitted with GPS and cameras to live stream the handing over of flour to the beneficiary. It shall mandatorily have the facility of weighing scales in order to satisfy the customer about the weight of the flour delivered,” the spokesperson said. All mandatory requirements of biometric verification, handing over of printed weight slip to the beneficiary, etc. shall be provided by the MPS, he added.