Potato & onion sellers of Fancy Bazaar incur huge losses

CONTAINMENT ZONE TAG

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The potato and onion traders from Fancy Bazaar area, which was under the containment zone tag after the Aloo Gudam case, have incurred huge losses as stocks worth several lakhs were damaged after the area was sealed.

Most of the wholesalers who deal particularly with the perishable items like onion and potato have incurred loss of around Rs 5 lakh each.

After the district administration's announcement of withdrawing the particular area from containment zone tag, the business activities have slowly returned to normalcy. However, the traders had to dispose huge quantity of rotten items.

Ranjit Kumar Singh, an employee of Rajkamal Hotel said that stocks of onions and potatoes worth Rs 5 lakhs were totally damaged. Singh said, "Already due to lockdown the business was not running smoothly. After the announcement of containment zone, the stocks have rot and nothing is left in usable quality. Now we are cleaning the area besides disposing the rotten items."

Shambhu Sarma, a wholesaler of onion and potato and owner of the Jaganath Rameshwarlal Ajmera said that almost 99% items of his stock got damaged. He said that he had stock of items worth Rs 7 lakhs before announcement of the containment zone and now over 90 per cent of his stocks have perished.

Besides the wholesalers who deal with perishable items, the other shopkeepers also had to incur losses, as they couldn't sell their stocks after the area was declared as containment zone.