CHENNAI: Food and Civil Supplies Minister P Venkataramanan told the Assembly on Thursday that the State will expand and modernise its paddy procurement and food distribution infrastructure, with 100 new Direct Paddy Procurement Centres (DPCs) and 15 warehouses, besides introducing technology-driven systems to improve quality control and monitoring.
In response to the debate over grant demands, Venkataramanan said the new DPCs would bring the total to 889. Each centre will have infrastructure, including roads, drinking water, toilets, weighbridges and moisture meters, with the 100 centres to be built at a cost of Rs 81 crore through the Rural Development Department.
The government will construct 15 warehouses with a combined capacity of 31,000 metric tonnes in 13 districts - Chengalpattu, Pudukkottai, Karur, Coimbatore, Tenkasi, Kallakurichi, Tirunelveli, Namakkal, Thanjavur, Salem, Cuddalore, Kancheepuram and Sivaganga - at a cost of Rs 81.60 crore.
Worker rest rooms will be established at 10 Tamil Nadu State Warehousing Corporation complexes at Rs 1.89 crore, including a toilet-equipped facility at Batlagundu, while a compound wall will be constructed at Ariyalur.
An AI-based mobile application, costing Rs 1 crore, will be developed to assess the quality of rice, wheat, tur dal, sugar and other food commodities. Another 150 fair-price shops will be created by bifurcating outlets with more than 1,500 ration cards.
For elderly and differently abled beneficiaries facing difficulties with fingerprint and iris authentication, face-authentication-enabled PoS machines will be provided to 150 fair-price shops at a total cost of Rs 59 lakh.
The department will create a Unified Monitoring Web Portal that integrates the Civil Supplies Corporation, the Commissionerate of Civil Supplies, the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, and the Civil Supplies CID for data sharing, real-time monitoring, and coordination.
QR-code tagging of rice bags will ensure traceability from mills to fair-price shops, while GIS mapping and vehicle-location tracking will strengthen supply-chain monitoring.