Government to digitise wheat procurement

New system will link more than 50 food offices

LAHORE: Following the directives of Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, the Punjab government has taken an initiative to digitise and link all 384 wheat centres for transparent procurement and sale process.

The new digitised system will also link the offices of more than 50 food offices across Punjab. With the collaboration of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) over the next two years, the procurement centres will have a digital record of wheat reserves, procurement of wheat from farmers, payment to them and sale and purchase of wheat from flour mills.

The record will be computerised, centres will be provided with desktops while flag centres will be given tablets for monitoring. Whereas, the district food controllers, deputy directors, deputy secretaries and additional secretaries will be given laptops.

K-PFC wheat procurement target set at 0.15m tonnes

All the employees of the food department will be trained by the PITB on specific software to operate the new system. As per specifications, the Punjab government buys wheat of more than Rs140 billion each year from farmers and sells the same to flour mills.

To procure wheat from about 500,000 farmers each year, there are around 384 wheat procurement centres present in almost every area of Punjab.

In the past, serious complaints were received regarding the issuance process of gunny sacks to farmers, embezzlement in food and wheat storage and discrepancies in weight. That is why the government has decided to digitise the whole process.

The World Bank has also indicated the need to digitise the food department while conducting the smart programme with the government. The government has planned its course of action in collaboration with the PITB. The department will develop food software and dashboards.

Wi-Fi devices will also be provided for internet connection. Each wheat procurement centre will feed the entire detail of the wheat reserves into the software system, along with the number of wheat stock in a jute sack and plastic bag, respectively.

Govt ready to set up panels to curb graft in food department

Also, the date on which the stock was given to the farmer, how much wheat was purchased and through which bank the transaction has been made, would be monitored through the new system.

The new system will also include details of the wheat sold to flour mills and all the records will be updated on a regular basis. Laptops will be provided to the district food controllers, divisional deputy directors and food directors so that they could review the latest status of any wheat sales and purchase centre any time.

Punjab Food Secretary Dr Zafar Nasrullah Khan told The Express Tribune that the food department’s sale and purchase of wheat were worth Rs300 billion annually.

To regulate the sales and purchase process and to keep matters updated, it was inevitable to take this measure of digitising the food department. “We will also be conducting special training courses in this regard and will ensure that the digitisation plan be enabled before the due date,” he said.