Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Confusion in ration card distribution

By K. V. Prasad

COIMBATORE, JAN. 8. The long wait for new ration cards is not exactly ending on a happy note. In fact, a fresh ordeal seems to have begun with the issue of cards since Friday. Missing names and wrong addresses are the early set of problems that has been detected.

"The very purpose of middle-income or high income groups applying for ration cards is for proof of address. We need it while applying for passport, loans, opening a bank account and even for cooking gas connections. If the address is printed wrong, the card will not be accepted by any agency," said a resident of V.S.K. Nagar in Vadavalli. This person found his name missing from the register and ended up not getting his card after waiting in the queue at the distribution outlet near the Vadavalli bus stand. His neighbour was lucky only to the extent of getting his card but was mortified to see his address wrong. Instead of V.S.K. Nagar, the address read as V.K.S. Garden that was further away from his residential colony.

Besides, the names of his wife and children had been misspelt. This had happened in spite of the names having been written in Tamil in the application form. "Parimala" had been misspelt as "Parimana" and "Aravind" had been misspelt as "Aravith".

Unconvincing assurance

When people complained that their names were not found in the registers, the staff at the issuing centres only expressed helplessness and said that they could approach the Taluk offices (Coimbatore South and Coimbatore North) on January 14. When pointed out that it was a holiday on account of Pongal, the staff members found it hard to give a convincing reply. All they could manage was an unconvincing assurance that the offices would be open for the purpose. As per an announcement made by the administration, if applicants failed to obtain the cards before the deadline fixed for a group of designated centres, they would have to approach the taluk offices. While there was no clear explanation on why one applicant did not get the card while his neighbour got it, certain other cases of missing names were attributed to the applicants not checking the list put up at the local fair price shops (FPS). It was said that they could have gone directly to the designated centre where they had submitted the applications, without verifying the list at the FPS. The card-issuing centres were indicated only in the list and not in the notices pasted at the centres.

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