Madhya Pradesh: Congress alleges scam in hiring of PoS machines

A Point Of Sale (PoS) machine that costs anything between Rs 3,000 - 5,000 has been hired on an annual rent of Rs 14,940 by the Madhya Pradesh Food and Civil Supplies Department. Over 22,000 such POS machines have been installed across public distribution system outlets in the state after the government decided to introduce a biometric -based system for disbursement of subsidised food.

In a written reply to a question asked by Congress MLA from Raghogarh Jaiwardhan Singh in the ongoing budget session of the state Assembly, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Om Prakash Dhruve accepted that the PoS machines were hired through the state electronics development corporation and till September 2016 two companies that had installed these machines had already been paid a little less than Rs 17 crore rupees.

Singh while talking to India Today alleged that it was a huge scam that required an investigation from a neutral agency. "A PoS machine these days won't cost more than Rs 5,000 but the government is paying close to Rs 15,000 as annual rent for one such machine. The contract has been signed for a period of five years, so the government will end up paying around Rs 75,000 as rent for a machine that costs less than Rs 5,000. If this is not a scam what is it," he said.

The government, however, is trying to defend its decision to hire the PoS machines on rent saying the rental costs include the annual maintenance as well. "There is no irregularity in this deal. We will have to understand that wherever technology is involved along with internet and electronic devices, it has been observed that the government has not been able to do proper maintenance work, so these machines have been hired from these two companies and they are also doing the maintenance," Cooperatives Minister Vishwas Sarang while talking to India Today said.

On being asked about the 17000 odd complaints that have been registered against non-functional PoS machines during the past one year, Sarang said, "We have looked into complaints and we will ask the concerned companies to solve the problems being faced by people."

Also read: Digital India: You'd think e-transactions have increased since note ban. They haven't

Also read: Shocker from Madhya Pradesh: 28,000 kids below six years of age died last year