COIMBATORE: Employees of ration shops have expressed dissatisfaction over the cooperative society officials’ instruction that the items in the Pongal grocery package, which were not sold, should be sold separately to PDS card holders.
The union claimed that officials have instructed the employees to pay the money for grocery items in advance to the cooperative societies concerned.
Tamil Nadu Ration Shop Employees Union general secretary P Dineshkumar said, “During the Pongal festival, Tamil Nadu Cooperative Department had announced the sale of grocery packages under three categories - Rs 199 (8 items), Rs 499 (20 items) and Rs 999 (35 items). Apart from the Pongal free gift which contains three materials, the grocery packages should be sold to card holders. But card holders were not mandated to buy it.”
“On an average, ten packages were sent to each ration shop. However, in reality, card holders did not show interest to buy the packages. Due to this, an average of 4 - 5 packages remained unsold in the ration shop.
Meanwhile, officials from the cooperative department have given oral instruction to sell grocery items after splitting the items separately from the package to card holders,” added Dineshkumar, who is working as a supervisor at a ration shop in Kancheepuram.
A Murugan, a ration shop worker in Coimbatore, said, “ Suspecting lack of quality of the grocery items, card holders did not buy them. The Co-operative Societies officials have instructed us to sell the items to individual ration card holders and transfer the money to the respective societies.”
However, A Alagiri, Joint Registrar of Cooperative Societies in Coimbatore refuted the worker’s claim and said, “We had sent limited quantity of grocery packages to ration shops during Pongal festival. Most of quantities which were sent to ration shops in the rural areas were sold.
There is a very small quantity of unsold stock in some ration shops. I have directed them to return them to societies. We have planned to sell them through cooperative grocery stores as the items would not expire immediately.”