Prez of shop owners’ body blames govt for spoiled rice

Vasco: Mormugao Fair Price Shop Owners Association president Gandhi Henriques, who is the secretary of All Goa Fair Price Shops Association, has blamed the civil supplies department for the spoiled rice received by the shops.
“This is the state of rice we are getting from the civil supplies department,” Henriques said. “The inspector and the director of civil supplies have said that the substandard rice given to fair price shops can be replaced.”
Henriques added, “They don’t understand the losses incurred by the fair price shop owners while transporting the rice quota to the godown and bringing new stock back to the shops.”
The shops also have to bear the cost of transportation and labour charges, Henriques said. “Who is going to pay the money? For the past three years, we have not received our payments under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana for food grains which we have distributed free of cost,” he said.
“When this matter was raised in the assembly, the government promised to pay us. But to date, no payment has been received.”
Many fair price shops are on the verge of shutting down because of these problems, Henriques said. He also said that the introduction of POS (point of sale) machines at the fair price shops has made operations difficult. He said that often people have to go back home empty-handed as POS machines fail to authenticate their cards.
Henriques said he has been feeding over 150 pigeons the substandard rice received by his shop. He said he would rather feed the pigeons daily than lose money in transporting the rice back to the godown. “I have disposed of about 10 bags of rice by feeding it to the birds,” he said.
Every fair price shop owner faces a 2% shortage from handling loss, he added.