As stale coarse rice is sold in the Open Market Sale (OMS) outlets people in the district are not at all interested to buy one of their staple foods.
The government also provides the same variety of rice to the Rajbari district jail, Ansar adjutant office, police line and fire brigade offices.
“We urge the authorities not to supply rotten rice to inmates of the district jail and other departments as it may lead to dissatisfaction among the inmates,” said Majibar Rahman, jail superintendent of Rajbari district Jail.
“We now can’t sell even 100 kilograms of coarse rice a day but earlier we could sell 1,000 kilograms of boiled rice in a few hours. We told the authorities not to allocate rice that has already gone stale,” said Sydul Kabir, a manager of OMS dealer in Rajbari Sadar upazila.
“We are not buying cheap rice from OMS outlets as our children do not want to eat those mealy rice. This forces us to buy boiled rice from local market at higher price,” said Kanchonbibi, a buyer from Bhobanipur village.
The Food Control Department is selling 257 tonnes of rice per month to OMS dealers and other departments, said Muhammad Tanvir Rahman, district food controller in Rajbari.
Different departments have already raised objection to the sale of coarse rice.
Tanvir Rahman yesterday told this correspondent that shortage of manpower was hampering monitoring of OMS activities and which is why some OMS dealers were depriving the low-income group.
Rajbari Sadar upazila has 12 government-authorised OMS dealers operating in the area. Almost none of them sells flour to the low-income group. They sell it in the black market and thus depriving the poor of fair price.
Admitting his failure to take action against the dishonest dealers, Tanvir said appointments of all 12 dealers were given on political ground.
Sources say the government initiated OMS sale of flour in the district on February 12 and each of the 12 dealers gets 1,000 kilograms of flour every day to sell.
Preferring anonymity, an official of the local food department said each OMS dealer had been selling only 200-300 kilograms of flour to people belonging to the low-income group every day since the programme began.
The rest is sold in the black market, he said.
One kilogramme of flour is priced at Tk22 at OMS outlets but the dealers sell that for Tk26-28 in the black market, he added.
People from low-income households visit OMS outlets to buy flour at rates fixed by the government but they often return empty-handed as OMS dealers keep the outlets closed or refuse to sell saying they have run out of stock.
