MARGAO: Taking no further risk, the Civil Supplies Department has finally started checking the food grains supplied to the fair price shops for August.
A team led by the officer concerned was noticed paying visits to the fair price shops across the Salcete taluka in the past few days. By Monday over 40 fair price shops were inspected.
There are 54 fair price shops in the taluka and most received supply of maggot-infested rice in May and June. However, a few shops continued to distribute infested rice to the beneficiaries in July too which invited the people’s ire.
To avoid further embarrassment, the Civil Supplies Department is keeping a strict vigil on the distribution of the food grains at fair price shops.
“Our team has inspected and checked over 40 fair price shops across the taluka and few are to be checked. We have not found infested rice which was supplied for August,” informed the officer concerned.
However, the department is still waiting for the reply from the owner of fair price shop No. 90 where the entire rice stock was infested by maggots.
The officer said that the fair price shop owner has to give a satisfactory reply within seven days.
On the other hand, the people have accused the department of targeting the fair price shops when the department is involved in supplying the infested rice.
“Show cause notice and action should have been taken for supplying the maggot-infested rice to the fair price shops and not for distributing the quota. The situation would have been avoided if there was proper check on supply of the food grains,” said Menino Dias, a resident of Davorlim.
