Onion hoarders do brisk business

A customer at the 70 mobile distribution centres — one in each assembly constituency — is allowed to buy one kg of onion, while those at the special centres like Super Bazaar can buy up to 2 kg.

This has inspired vegetable vendors — those selling at footpaths or carts — to resort to ingenuity with assistance from family and friends.

Raghuvir is one such vendor who operates in the Paharhanj area. He says: “I can’t afford to buy onions from the open market. So my wife, brother and I queue up near a tempo everyday. And by evening I can sell 5-7 kg of onion. With a little luck, we manage to stock up to 10-12 kg in two days”.

The sales at Rs 40 per kg brings him unprecedented profits. “As long as the government continues to subsidise onion sale, I will earn something”.

Onion traders and DSCSC officials agree that Raghuvir’s story is one of the reasons behind the prolonged crisis and spiraling prices. “We can’t ask people to furnish identity cards. But a possible solution would be to sell onion through ration shops to only customers with ration cards,” says a DSCSC official. When this reporter visited the onion distribution centre at ITO this morning, more than 200 people were standing in a loose queue.

There were frequent altercations, while three hapless DSCSC employees tried desperately to clear their stocks. A two-hour vigil at the spot revealed that at least four of the customers returned for another round.

Several DSCSC men distributing the vegetable have complaints of being manhandled by the public. Jagdish Kumar, who works at the DSCSC godown at Azadpur, was roughed up in the Brahmpuri area yesterday. Customers also pelted stones and smashed the windows of the tempo carrying onion. Says Jagdish: “There were only three of us in the vehicle. It was impossible to tackle hundreds of people. Though we had informed the local police earlier, there was no one in the vicinity.”

What has enraged customers at several places is that after waiting in a queue for more than an hour, they are suddenly told that the stock has finished. A senior official in the Food and Civil Supplies department says the government has decided to press 50 more tempos into service from tomorrow. Currently, 90 onion-carrying tempos are being used to sell the vegetable at subsidised rates in the city.

The additional trucks are expected to increase the supply of onion to 1.8 lakh kg from the current 1.5 lakh kg. In the Azadpur wholesale market, meanwhile, onion continues to be traded for Rs 40 per kg. But today’s consignments from Rajasthan and Maharashtra were half that of what has been arriving so far. Yesterday, 24 truckloads of onion were traded; today only 12 trucks reached the market.