Distribution of fertilizers to cooperative societies through SMS alert

Chandigarh, August 22, 2012: In a bid to bring transparency and check the malpractice of black marketing in the distribution of fertilizers in the open market, the Punjab government has evolved a SMS system to share information regarding the distribution of fertilizers amongst the members of cooperative societies.

Disclosing this here today a spokesperson of the Chief Minister’s Office said that the decision to this effect has been taken by the Cooperation department after seeking directions from the Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal for ensuring absolute transparency in the entire process of fertilizer distribution.

The new SMS system was aimed at bringing efficiency in the existing procedure of distribution on one hand besides ensuring the governance reforms in Cooperation department.

This scheme was successfully implemented on trial basis in Sri Muktsar Sahib, Bathinda and Jalandhar districts where around 10,000 SMSes were sent to the members of the cooperative societies to update them about the status of the fertilizers.

According to this new technique 10-20 members each from nearly 4000 cooperative societies of the state were shortlisted by the department and their relevant details were forwarded to the service providers for SMS service.  However in order to widen the scope of scheme the government has now decided to send SMSes to 50 members of each society.

As a part of this unique program, the mobile numbers of about 71000 members have been fed into the system by Spice Digital limited, the service provider agency which has been selected and entrusted with this task by PUNCOFED. Under this system SMSes would be sent by the fertilizers distributing agencies viz. Markfed and IFFCO to the nominated service provider immediately after the trucks were dispatched from rack point to the societies. These SMSes would be in turn forwarded by the service provider to the members of the concerned societies so that they could be updated about the latest status of the fertilizers supply and could get it in time. The spokesperson further said that the information regarding the advance stock of the DAP and other fertilizers to be allocated to the societies in the coming Rabi season would also intimated to the members through SMS service.

Newly evolved SMS service would not only help the cooperative societies in keeping a strict vigil over the uniform distribution of fertilizers but would also be instrumental in ensuring better supervision and coordination amongst the agencies and the societies through the specially designed software, the spokesperson added.