nashik the state government is planning to provide 5g point of sale pos machines to fair price shop fps owners so that they can complete the biometric transactions which are mandatory for giving foodgrain to beneficiaries under public distribution system pds at a faster pace the central government provides food grains to the saffron card holders priority family and yellow card holders antyodaya every month with the condition that the beneficiaries authenticate themselves using biometrics against their aadhaar numbers a senior official from the department said currently 2g machines are used for authentication the owners of fair price shops have been complaining that the machines are unable to process the requests and at times it takes more than 15 to 20 minutes to process each request due to this the beneficiaries often have to go home emptyhanded and visit the shop several times this leads to a quarrel between the two the federation of shopkeepers had even warned of surrendering their pos machines to the local tahsildars however during several rounds of meetings with the state government the shop owners have been assured of new machines capable of carrying out the process faster since there were network issues the government intervened and got the local service providers to provide relief to the shopkeepers currently they are using 2g machines that are old the government is now planning to provide the 5g machines that are also compatible with the 4g technology a senior officer said