BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has urged the Centre to stop the move of Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) for merger of its regional office here with Patna office in Bihar.
Writing to Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public distribution Ram Vilas Paswan, State Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain said the decision to merge Bhubaneswar and Patna regions of the CWC will seriously jeopardise the interest of the people of Odisha.
The regional office of CWC in Bhubaneswar has been playing a vital role in storage and warehousing of various commodities including food grains and notified commodities of Food Corporation of India and Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation.
Noting that the regional office here is one of the 15 offices of CWC functioning across the country, Swain said it has the operational capacity of 3.48 lakh tonne catering to the storage needs at 21 locations in 15 districts spread across the State.
“More than 90 per cent of the employees working in Bhubaneswar Regional Office are local Odia people. Moreover, this region is having 90 per cent occupancy and continuously giving profit during the last five years,” the letter said.
Seeking Paswan’s personal intervention to allow Bhubaneswar region to continue operation, Swain said monitoring various activities including scientific storage from Patna will be extremely difficult and the progress of warehousing operations in Odisha will be severely hampered.
Cautioning that CWC will ultimately incur a huge loss, Swain said members of the Odisha Legislative Assembly cutting across party lines raised their concern and opposed the decision of CWC.
In its order on July 26, the CWC has asked the regional officers of Patna and Bhubaneswar to complete necessary formalities of merging the two regions to a single unit by August 14, 2019. “The regional office building in Bhubaneswar should be given on rent, preferably to a public sector organisation,” said CWC group general manager Arvind Chaudhri.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Central Warehousing Corporation Employees’ Union has also sought the intervention of the Union Minister in the matter.