Due to the financial crisis faced by the market intervention agency, Supplyco, there is a severe shortage of 13 subsidized items at the agency’s Christmas-New Year markets. Commodities such as cowpea, tur dal, sugar, and chickpeas, as well as raw rice, are unavailable at many places. Although Christmas markets were opened in all the districts last year, this time around, they have been restricted to Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Ernakulam, and Thrissur.
Supplyco is in arrears of Rs 630 crore to the distributors who supplied the commodities earlier. Owing to this, no one took part in the tenders floated by Supplyco for the Christmas markets. The agency later conducted discussions with the distributors and procured the commodities for the markets.
Thiruvananthapuram: Sugar, raw rice, kuruva rice, chickpeas, and black gram are unavailable. Although chilli, coriander, green gram, tur dal, rice, and coconut oil are available, they are sold in lesser quantities than demanded by the customers.
Kollam: Subsidized commodities such as green gram, coconut oil, tur dal, and coriander are available. Supplyco employees expect that stocks of rice and black gram will arrive on Sunday and that other commodities will be available in the coming days.
Pathanamthitta: Except sugar, 12 of the 13 subsidized commodities arrived for sale by Saturday night.
Kottayam: Only coconut oil, coriander, and rice are in stock in the subsidized category.
Ernakulam: Until the other day, only tur dal, coriander, and coconut oil were available in the subsidized category of commodities. Green gram, tur dal, chickpeas, chilli, matta rice, and Jaya rice arrived on Saturday.
Thrissur: Only black gram was added on Saturday to the stock of rice, cowpeas, coconut oil, and coriander, which were available on the first day. Mayor M.K. Varghese and P. Balachandran, MLA, had walked out of the inaugural function after people turned angry over the non-availability of commodities on the very first day.
Limited stock continues at Palayam outlet
Only two subsidized commodities, Sabari coconut oil and coriander, are available at Supplyco’s Maveli store at Palayam in Kozhikode. The store had got into controversy some time ago after the junior assistant in charge displayed a price board mentioning that commodities were unavailable. The practice of indicating that commodities were not in stock was discontinued since then.
The employee who returned to duty after his period of suspension, is now working at another outlet of Supplyco in Kozhikode.
