OMS line getting longer day by day

Noman Mosharef :
The government subsidized programme Open Market Sale (OMS) line getting longer day by day. The people from lower, lower middle and middle income group are mostly queue up for subsidised rice and flour sold at a truck under the OMS programme.
The people from mentioned group are facing great difficulties to maintain their daily life resulting scrimmage in front of OMS truck as the price of daily essentials are skyrocketing in the market.
Eighty-year-old Fulmoti Begum left home in the capital’s Lalbagh before daybreak to queue up for rice and flour sold at OMS truck.
Suffering from old-age complications, the frail woman trudged to the spot near Azimpur Agrani School, fearing that the line would be too long and the goods would be sold out before her turn.
“I had to return home empty-handed the last time. I cannot afford to miss it again, because rice price is too much in the market,” she said.
By 7:00am, there were at least 150 people in the queue and Fulmoti was somewhere in the middle. The mobile shop started selling the goods at 9:00pm and she was able to score a five-kg sack of rice and flour at Tk 270.
“These will last for five days and then I might have to come again. It’s nothing but my misfortune that I had to come here at this age,” said the widow.
Like Fulmoti, thousands of low-income people in Dhaka scramble for essentials at OMS mobile shops as the prices continue to soar. Many return home
empty-handed because the shops run out of goods fast.
Yusuf Biswash, who lives in a slum in Mirpur’s section 6 area, came to Mirpur 2 area around 7:00pm on Thursday to buy essentials at an affordable price.
Like everyone else, he stood in queue in front OMS truck. After standing for about four hours, a tired Yusuf Biswas sat on the ground. Daily wage earner Shahjan Mrida, too, followed him.
Yusuf Biswas is a carpenter. As he sustained injuries on the back in a road accident several months ago, he cannot work regularly. His daughter sells bead garland and earns about Tk 3,000 a month. Yusuf Biswas runs his five-member family with about Tk 13-16 thousand a month.
 Yusuf Biswas said he did not stand in this queue up until that time he started facing crisis for over two and three months. “I can’t stand in line for long due to back pain and I need to sit after a while.”
The scenario is not common in the capital Dhaka but also across the country.
The Directorate General of Food runs this programme to sell rice at a subsidised price under the OMS programme. Rice is sold at a price of Tk 30 per kg and flour at Tk 24 per kg. One customer can buy five kg rice and five kg flour at the maximum cost of Tk 270. The price for the same amount of rice and flour would be more than Tk 500 in markets.