Trinath & Sarthak Kanjilal
Mayabunder, Nov 15: Due to improper check of food items coming from Mainland India by the concerned authorities, the residents of North and Middle Andaman region are finding pebbles in raw wheat supplied in their region. Many residents had already experienced the reality while sieving the flour.
As per reports, since last month the residents are facing the same trouble and are compelled to buy flour from open market. Fuming over this, some residents told Andaman Sheekha that because of the inefficient work of the authorities they are spending money to buy pebbles instead of Raw Wheat.
However, the residents have registered their complaint to the vendor of the region, Jai Kumar General Store and Flour Mills that they are finding rocks in the Raw Wheat they are purchasing from the store following which the owner of the store, Mr Jai Kumar himself checked the wheat issued to him from the Department of Civil Supplies.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha over phone, the owner of Jai Kumar General Store and Flour Mills, Mr Jai Kumar said that after he received a lot of complaints from the residents of the area, he personally checked the Wheat wherein he found that pebbles of same color like a Raw Wheat is present in huge quantity in the baggage he received from the Civil Supplies Department.
“I have immediately informed the competent authority of the Civil Supply Department, with a full proof sample,” Mr Jai Kumar added.
Mr Jai Kumar also added that recently, he refused to take around 2000 tons of Wheat as he didn’t get any clearance from the authority whether the Wheat is checked and of good quality.
When Andaman Sheekha contacted the Secretary, Civil Supply Department, Mr SK Singh today, he said that the department has already received a complaint in this regard.
“It is not like we were not checking the quality earlier, the FCI officials as well as Inspector of Civil Supply department always do a random check in 03 gunny bags of Wheat by making 03 holes in it, to check the quality,” Mr SK Singh said.
Mr SK Singh further said that as he is now aware of the problem, hence, he will make sure that the FCI officials and Inspector of Civil Supply Department check 03 gunny bags completely by selecting those randomly, in a lot and only after getting clearance from both, the supply will be made in the market.
