With each passing day, the line of people seeking to buy rice and wheat flour is getting lengthier in front of the government’s truck sale of essential foods. Even the government people who are involved in distributing and selling food items at subsidised lower prices among poor people said that they had never seen such huge crowds before.
According to a report yesterday, whenever the truck of OMS (Open Market Sale) comes to the slums of Korail in the capital, poor people get engaged in a virtual strife among themselves to get rice and flour.
At least 40,000 families live in the Korail slums area, but the amount of rice and flour the Dhaka Rationing Office is sanctioning for them is very meager indeed. Often people spending a long time in the queue had to return empty handed. Daily, a total of 70 OMS trucks take positions at the city’s different areas and everywhere the same picture of frustration among poor people is found for not getting commodities.
This scenario otherwise proves that rising inflation has hit the people hard on the one hand but the government is failing to feed the marginal people with adequate foods. Do the government people who are still boasting of development have any idea how many people are passing hungry nights? When people are not getting food to eat, it is futile to talk about whether they are getting proper nutrition or not.
According to a study jointly conducted in June by the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and Brac Institute of Governance Studies, 21 lakh people slipped below the poverty line. Certainly, this figure is higher now.
The bite of food inflation is going so deep that even the middle class people are now standing in queues to buy OMS food items compromising their middle class identity. Such has become the predicament now. It is very uncertain when the crisis that hit Bangladesh’s economy will be over. Some are predicting that the year 2023 will be even more difficult for Bangladesh as import of grains may shrink further due to fall in the dollar reserves. Yet this corrupt government that does not have people’s mandate is accepting its failure.
