Shaharul Islam Md Abu Hena, relief and rehabilitation officer of Bogra district, said: “Local representatives of the district had disbursed VGF cards among the solvent people instead of helpless and these people used to sell the delivered rice to traders with low prices.”
Ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, the government has been distributing rice among VGF card holders. The government has already distributed nearly 1,123 tonnes and 620kg of rices among 212,364 card holders in 12 upzilas and 12 municipalities of the district, said the district relief and rehabilitation officer.
"Instead of this, government had distributed around 509 tonnes of rice among the flood-affected people of the district,” said Abu Hena.
The district relief and rehabilitation officer said to give illegal advantages to relatives and to get supports from the voters, local representatives usually distributed cards among the solvent people, who are not eager to eat the relief rice as the quality of this rice is not good enough, so they sell it to local traders by Tk12 to 14 per kg.
He requested to the local representatives to distribute cards among the helpless who really need the card to run their daily lives though local representatives ignored the allegation.
During his recent visit to different upazilas of the district this reporter has found that traders of the district were waiting around the rice distribution camps to buy the rice at lower price. After taking the rice, card holders went to the traders and had sold it immediately.
To stop this tendency of selling the relief rice, Upazila Nirbahi Officer of Dhunat upazila has conducted several drives in the upazila and sized a huge amount of rice.
Though the upazila officer has warned the traders to stop buying rice from the card holders, people are still selling rice to traders.
Some card holders who used to sale the rice to the local traders with very low prices told the Dhaka Tribune wishing anonymity: “The quality of government rice is very bad and it is quite impossible to eat it.”
“So we have compelled to sell the rice to buy the good one, they added.”
