Qeemat Punjab App replete with flaws

LAHORE :Online delivery service of fresh vegetables and fruits at officially notified rates introduced by the Punjab government has also failed as the Qeemat Punjab App developed by Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) is full of flaws, including English language mistakes and other glitches.

The “Qeemat Punjab” introduced “Home Delivery Service” feature to provide goods at regulated prices at citizen’s doorstep almost a week ago is also proving faulty as walled city areas such as Nisbat Road, and others are out of coverage. Further, if one attempts to place an order of fresh items from these areas the App notified it out of coverage area. On the other hand, during the week, more than 40 percent from “Home Delivery Service” were not delivered to the public.

According to the PITB officials, the feature Fresh Online Free Home delivery service is covering the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan. But on App there is no link to place order in Islamabad which is capital city and did not fall in Punjab province.

According to the PITB official, total of 46 items, including fruits and vegetables are listed in Fresh Online order form. The App will help people who don’t have means of going out alone, wish to avoid tiresome traffic, or going through a busy market with multiple shopping bags. To deliver Order users have to select the fresh online icon from Qeemat App, select tehsil and the items of their desire from the list and enter a quantity. The total bill will appear on the top of the screen. Necessary shipping details and pin location also need to be set from the map. Order will be placed with cash on delivery mode of payment. User can see the status of the order in scheduled orders and also orders history.

Lahore being the major populated city amongst others is providing the service in five tehsils, including Tehsil Model Town, Tehsil Lahore City, Tehsil Lahore Cantt, Tehsil Shalimar, and Tehsil Raiwind. To stop the profiteering by the shopkeepers, this citizen-centric app, launched on 23rd April, 2019, got tremendous response and has so far been downloaded by more than 600,000 users all across Punjab. While out of 23,646 registered complaints, 23,516 have been resolved, the PITB official stated.

On the questions of issues faced by the users on the new feature of Home Delivery Service, Qaiser Shabbir, an official attached with the development of the App, admitted that there are some issues related from operation side of the App. ‘The deputy commissioner office is looking after the administrative side and two private sector vendors namely Sereat and HSM are engaged for Home Delivery Service”, he said adding that the PITB were removing all the technical issues gradually. Further, he also admitted that good number of orders was not delivered.

Director Communication PITB Husnain Iqbal said it was very difficult for the government to ensure the prices in the province of around 120 million people. He said that pricing and free home service delivery was the responsibility of Deputy Commissioner who hired third party vendors for it. The DC is also responsible for checking the quality of products and monitoring of prices, he added. He admitted that issues emerge but parallel resolve.

Interestingly, the Qeemat Punjab App have number of mistakes, including the wrong spelling of even simple and common word of ‘cancel’ as it was written ‘cancle’ in the App. Further on pricing, two different rates are given for a similar grade item. For instance, on Friday, the price of onion A-grade with weight of minimum 110 gram per onion was Rs48 per kilogram, then again A-grade price was mentioned Rs40 per kg with weight of minimum 70gram per onion and for C-grade price was Rs44 per kilogram with weight of minimum 70gram per onion. Similar issue was witnessed in number of other perishable items too.