The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Shaky start to scanning drive

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Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Others

Shaky start to scanning drive

Staff Reporter

Iris apparatus hit by glitches

VIJAYAWADA GUNTUR: The new mode of biometrics adopted to capture the impression of the iris of people seeking ration cards showed signs of fizzling out even before it took off, here on Wednesday. Though officials tried to play it down terming the `snag' as part of the process of `customization of cameras,' for the common man, the two iris-scanning centres set up at the Kakaraparthi Bhavanarayana College and the Zilla Parishad High School at Patamata on the first day on Wednesday, were a `failure,' as he is not concerned with systemic failures, customization, uploads and downloads.

The iris scanning machines are being imported from the United States of America, as part of the efforts of the district administration to streamline the public distribution system by distributing ration cards to all the genuine beneficiaries while weeding out the bogus ones.

Criticism brushed aside

Brushing aside public criticism, the Joint Collector, P. Sampat Kumar, said since the machines were being operated on a trial basis, there were bound to be some errors at the initial stage. "There is no short-cut method to skip the initial hiccups," he explained.

Describing the installation of the machines as a major breakthrough, he said as per the earlier plan, operation of these machines would be put to use in full scale from July 1.

"The local staff might take a little time to get used to the sophisticated software," he said.

The 39 centres proposed to be set up in the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation limits would be opened in a phased manner.

Guntur: Hiccups in the issuing of new cards in the district continued on the second day. Twelve centres were opened on Tuesday, but computers were there at only five places. The remaining places got computers on Wednesday but in Guntur, which had 15 centres, there was not much progress. The computers began functioning only in the afternoon and only six cards were issued. In all, 2500 applications were received and of them 26 persons filed declarations.

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