BHUBANESWAR: With cold storage owners on indefinite strike by shutting down their stores, a steep hike in  potato price is staring at the State if the Government continues to be indifferent to their problems.
Accusing Odisha Government of turning a blind eye to their problems, cold storage owners said they have been sustaining huge loss due to failure of the potato mission in the State.

Of the 40 functional cold stores, 26 units came up during the last three years (since 2015)when the Government launched its ‘State Potato Mission’ to achieve self sufficiency in potato production. In a bid to attract promoters for setting up cold storage, the Government had announced several incentives.
However, all the cold stores are on the verge of closure due to high capital cost and interest burden, huge electricity bill, under-utilisation of capacity and lack of warehouse receipt finance, rued Secretary of the Odisha Cold Storage Association Janardhan Sahoo.

“All the promoters have eroded the entire working capital of their units during the last four years of operation. The units are on the verge of shutting down. We have lost our hope of revival,” Sahoo said adding, the farmers who think that the units were going to provide them a safe landing for their produce and provide security to their earnings are also at stress.

In order to revive the industry, the owners of the cold stores have been demanding a revival package which includes waiver of entire outstanding of term loans or grant of `two crore for 5000 tonne capacity cold store, credit linkage at low rate of interest (3 per cent on term loan and working capital), 50 per cent subsidy on electricity bills, subsidy on transportation and storage, and formation of farmers producer groups, seeds production through cold storage promoters and research and development in potato production, engagement of technical and qualified post harvest management staff for monitoring.

Each cold storage of 5000 tonne capacity provides direct and indirect employment to 300 individuals and serve 10,000 farmers for storage of their agricultural produce. Neglecting this industry affects the livelihood of  at least 10,300 farmer families in the catchment area and an overall impact to around four lakh farmer families throughout the State, Sahoo said.

Earlier, the association had given several representations to the State Government but to no avail, he alleged.