Govt’s serious warning to onion hoarders

Officials from the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies CID on Tuesday said that the hoarders of onion would be booked under the Essential Commodities Act and warned them against stocking onion and selling the same at a higher price.

Onion was included in the list of essential commodities in the year 2014 along with potatoes and hoarding of these essential commodities can attract police action and punishment of imprisonment up to seven years.

The Civil Supplies CID teams have already started looking for cases of onion hoarding and a team, led by a DSP and a Civil Supplies CID, carried out a search at Koyambedu wholesale market on Monday to check if onion stock was kept beyond the permitted level at godowns.

Distributors and sellers were instructed not to hide onion and retail them for a fair price. The raid was conducted as per the directions from CS-CID DGP Prateep V Philip.

Meanwhile, after the import from Egypt, a 30-tonne load of onion reached Tiruchy from Nasik, bringing down the price to Rs 60 per kg.

While the Egyptian onion had little response, the Nasik onion has reached the city and the traders who have been selling the onion at Rs 100 per kg have reduced the price to Rs 60 per kg.

The entire Gandhi market had a roaring business on Tuesday as people heaved a sigh of relief with the price coming down for the product, which is the fundamental ingredient for any food item prepared.

According to traders, unlike the Egyptian onion, the Nasik onion has no damage and the people have shown much interest to purchase it.

The traders also said that the price of onion has come down after a long time. While they were sitting idle for a longer duration, the arrival of Nasik onion has given them a good business, they said.

A few traders said that the Egyptian onion, which came in a wet condition, was dried on Monday and some other traders had a huge stock of unsold onion. “Since there is no wastage in Nasik onion, we can sell them immediately with good profit. Since most of the Egyptian onion is damaged due to its wet condition, retail traders have no interest to purchase it,” said another official.