New system for sale of vegetables a non-starter

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, April 5

‘Conceived a lot but delivered nothing’ – would be an apt description for hit-and-trial methods and experiments being carried out by the district administration, the top brass of the civic body and the police to make promised home delivery of milk and milk products, vegetables, fruit, ration and medicines to the city residents during 21-day lockdown. Even after two weeks of the lockdown, several schemes launched by the authorities towards this end have not yielded the desired results.

While home delivery of grocery and medicines had made some headway, that too in a selective manner, the worst to fare was the supply of vegetables, fruits and milk. On first day of the new scheme for door-to-door sale of vegetables on Saturday (after 3-day closure of wholesale sabzi mandi), a large number of city localities, including posh residential areas, had little or no supply of vegetables, in most cases, on the issue of prices being charged by bulk suppliers and those for retail sale in mohallas.

The district authorities had chalked out a new plan for ward-wise sale of vegetables in all 95 wards under supervision of area councillors in the city last week. As a part of the new experiment, the sabzi mandi was closed for three days. The scheme envisaged that farmers would bring their produce to the mandi on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while bulk suppliers would purchase the produce on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to sell veggies to the vendors (rehri wallas) for door-to-doo sale in residential localities.

However, feedback received from various localities in Civil Lines, Model Town, Dugri, Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar and Haibowal, more or less, indicated that the new scheme had failed to click with a majority of vendors complaining that bulk suppliers had sold veggies at a higher price and it would not be possible to sell the same at prices fixed by the administration.

Another common complaint of residents of colonies on the periphery of the city was that the vendors preferred to sell veggies and fruits in posh areas because in those localities they could get higher prices whereas the poor and middle class people tended to haggle over prices. Some other residents – residing on periphery, said rotten or wilted vegetables were sold to them at exorbitant rates by vendors.

On the other hand, commission agents complained that owing to the sudden closure of mandi (for three days), large stocks of perishable items of fruits and vegetables had rotted. “Even on the day fixed by the authorities for sale of vegetables to bulk suppliers (on Saturday), average sale of vegetables was not more than 50 per cent although wholesale prices were also slashed,” said an arhtiya requesting not to be named.

Common complaints of residents on home delivery of essentials

• No home delivery of milk, milk products.
• Home delivery of ration only to regular or known customers.
• Essential commodities sold at higher rates.
• Councillors insisting on sale of veggies in select localities.

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