Pb fruit, veg markets raided to check use of calcium carbide

Teams of Mandi Officers on Tuesday raided fruit and vegetable markets across the State in the early hours and destroyed about 68 quintals of overripe fruits and vegetables on the spot while imposing fines on the erring firms or traders between Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000 depending upon the extent of the fault.

The raid came 15 days after similar raids conducted by the teams.

“On Tuesday morning, various teams of officers including team headed by Punjab Mandi Board general manager inspected fruit and vegetable markets statewide. To utter surprise, there was no unethically ripened fruit, instead overripe fruits and those contaminated by fungus were found. 67.7 quintals of fruits and vegetables, unfit for human consumption, were destroyed,” said Tandarust Punjab Mission director Kahan Singh Pannu.

Pannu said that it was indeed heartening to see that finally, the impact of month-long campaign has borne fruit by the crackdown of unethically ripened fruits from the markets.

The entire exercise began with surprise checks meant to warn fruits and vegetable traders, followed by awareness drives, he said.

“Raids on Tuesday morning were meant basically for the assessment of the impact of the entire five-week long activity. I am happy to share that Punjab fruit markets are on the threshold of being calcium carbide free,” he said.

Earlier in one of its kind exercise, 35 teams comprising of nearly 200 officials, had conducted surprise checks simultaneously in 35 main mandis across the state on June 26 wherein thousands of tonnes of fruits and vegetables were checked to ascertain their quality.

State Mandi Board officers along with the experts from Post Harvest Technology Centre have been imparting training on ethical ripening of fruits through awareness camps held at mandi level.

Besides, the Punjab Mandi Board has installed 56 ripening chambers of 10 tonnes each, in 13 mandis, which are running successfully. Motivated by the successful working of these ripening chambers, private sector players have also ventured into the same.