Prices of vegetables have skyrocketed with the huge gap between demand and supply in the market. This has created a serious problem for the people and especially hostel owners which has fixed budget of mess for the inmates. Prices of potato, onion and tomato have increased in both retail and wholesale market and vegetables are now stretching the budgets of average hostel mess.
“This is not for the first time that vegetables prices are on sky high. The hike has been there for few weeks and every week there has been a considerable jump. There is as huge margin in demand and supply.” said Manoj Kumar, a vegetable seller in Naga Baba Khatal market.
Price of tomato has shot up to Rs60 a kg which is not affordable for an average mess running in hostels of the city. Prices of basic vegetables such as onion has raised to Rs30 a kg from Rs10 a kg and potato to Rs20 a kg from Rs10 a kg . Apart from households that bear the burden of the abrupt price rise mess facilities are affected badly.
“Earlier our meal used to have combination of two vegetables but due to instant price hike of vegetables that continued in market for weeks we have to substitute one vegetable with dry beans like soyabean, rajma or gram. Unfortunately we are cutting down the nutrition proportion from the meal but we are helpless as we have fixed budget for meals for hostellers and vegetables are getting out of our budget,” Said Ramananda Singh, owner of a girl hostel.
“We are facing a lot of difficulties in managing our mess due to price hike. If this hike will continue we will be forced hike our mess charges it is out of budget but we are not compromising with the quality of food,” said Alka Priya, hostel owner in Harmu.
Even the price hike of vegetables is felt by in-mates of the hostel by seeing the quality of meals they are getting. “This sudden rise in price of vegetables has affected the food menu in our hostel.
We get those vegetables whose prices are comparatively and green supplements like green vegetables or salad are missing in our meals these days. Everyday at least in one meal we get dry beans,” said Seema Sahu, inmate of a lalpur hotel.