Even though the State Government is claiming to have adopted a system to fully computerise the PACSs (Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies), the inefficiency of the company, which has been entrusted with the job a year ago, has been alleged as the reason for the problems being faced in paddy procurement, disbursement of timely agriculture credit, collection and distribution of subsidised seeds, fertilisers and pesticides.
According to sources, the company which has been given the task of computerisation at the PACSs, does not allegedly have the required software and no previous experience of implementation process in PACSs, which involves a number of activities including enumeration of member data, reconciliation of previous accounts and training and handholding of semi-literate PACS staffs.
Proper process was also not allegedly adopted to award the computerisation of PACSs to the company, which had reportedly been failing even in adopting the Core Banking Sstem (CBS) in the District Cooperative Banks and the Odisha State Cooperative Bank for the last three years. The company was awarded the work even before the consultant IIT-Kharagpur came out with a detailed report.
As the PACSs handle banking (credit and deposits), trading of both inputs (seeds, fertilisers and pesticides) and output (procurement of paddy and other produces), warehousing and PDS activities to name a few, they need a different software to handle all these activities, according to experts.
According to sources, over Rs 100 crore was estimated to be spent on for the project at 2,709 PACSs of which nearly Rs 20 crore has already been released for procurement of computers and other hardware, which has been gathering dust for one year.