To give relief to the general public from spiraling prices of onions the district administration of Dehradun is planning to sell onions at some Public Distribution System (PDS) shops. At the initiative of the District Magistrate Ravi Nath Raman a meeting of Mandi Samiti President Ravindra Singh and District Food and Civil Supply Officer PS Pangti was organised at the office of former on Friday.
Pangti later told The Pioneer that the onions at whole sale prices would be made available in some PDS shops from Monday. He said that 18-20 shops are being earmarked for the purpose. The Mandi Samiti was providing onions at cheap prices since August 07 in shops at Niranjanpur Sabji Mandi but most of the people of the city were not able to avail its benefit due to the distance factor involved. Faced with this problem the district administration decided to involve PDS shops in this venture.
The DM said that the decision to provide cheap onions at PDS shops is being taken to contain rising the prices of the onion and give relief to general public. The prices of onions are on upward movement from last many days with consumers forced to shell out `70-80 for every kg in different mandis and vegetables shops of the city. Agriculture experts are attributing increase in prices of onion on the nonseasonal rains in the months of March and April due to which moisture entered the bulb causing it rot early. It is worth mentioning here that the major production months of onion are from October to March and after March the onions stored in the cold stores are consumed. The union government decided to ban the exports of onion when the stocks stared diminishing rapidly however this decision proved too little and too late as the prices of onions sky rocketed forcing general public to suffer.