Shujalpur: With the government focusing solely on purchase of onions, grain merchants have been left in the lurch. The entire local mandi premises is being used only for purchase of onions and the grain traders have little to do. The Mandi administration has a separate premises for trading vegetables in the city but for reasons best known to the authorities, the grain mandi premises is being used for buying onions.
The traders, who could not buy food grains due to the 10-day strike of the farmers from June 1 to 10, are again facing problems. Now farmers are coming to the Mandi but only with onions. And those who are coming to sell their other produce, have no place to sell it.
The grain merchants association and other traders’ bodies have submitted memorandums to the mandi administration complaining about the new rules laid down by the government for making payments to farmers, which, they said, were creating problems for them and also that the mandi premises has been taken over for onion procurement work.
Grain merchant Vinod Sharma said that he has done hardly any business over the last 10-15 days. Gopal Goyal, chairman of the Traders’ Association and also traders’ representative in the mandi committee said that the grain merchants have been hit hard by mandi premises being completely taken over for procurement of onions. Mandi committee chairman Kailash Soni said that the memorandum of the traders has been forwarded to Mandi Board for appropriate decision and action.
So far, 20,000 quintals of onions have been purchased. The stocks are being transported to Satna and Jabalpur. Presently trucks are being used for transportation but with the inflow of onions growing by leaps and bounds, the administration may decide to transport the stocks through good trains.
Heavy police force has been deployed on the mandi premises to prevent any sort of untoward incident. The police station in-charge Dinesh Prajapati said the police was present only to ensure that there is no violence.
Traffic thrown haywire
The traffic arrangements in the city have thrown haywire by hundreds of farmers entering the town with their onion-laden tractor trolleys. They have parked their tractors haphazardly on both the sides of the main streets, narrowing the roads and making things difficult for other road users. As the farmers have to wait for hours and sometimes days, before their produce is sold, the parked tractor-trolleys have become a real menace for the cops. The farmers say that they have no intention of disturbing the smooth flow of traffic but they have little option. “Show me a proper place and I will park my tractor there,” a farmer said.
