CHENNAI: Cockroaches, rats and honeybees make a beeline for the dingy shops stacked with gunny bags containing food grains on Munusamy Road in Kalaingar Karunanidhi Nagar. These creatures consume the grains, making the dilapidated place their home. They have made a dent in the government-run Fair Price Shops, which provide consumable essential commodities to over 6,000 families residing at MGR Nagar, KK Nagar and Nesapakkam areas in Chennai. The three-decade-old fair price shops, four in number, have been in a state of neglect for several years, forcing residents to purchase essentials under high risk. “There is always a danger of the roof falling down, which happened two months back,” complained Mary, a homemaker from Mylai Sivan Street at MGR Nagar. “The ceiling began to crack when we were buying oil. Fortunately, no untoward incident was reported since the consumers were standing away,” she said, pointing out at the storeroom. Each fair price shop is attached to a warehouse that stores food grains, and these are housed in the same building, under unhygienic conditions. When this reporter visited a shop on Wednesday, a cockroach was found dead, while the walls were covered with cobwebs. There was no doubt that the fair price shops had not been cleaned for many years. Poor infrastructure has caused the floors to disappear, with dust emerging from the mud, as employees are seated outside the shops for billing purposes. Another shop is covered by a flex board to protect it from heat and rain. Gunasekaran, a local resident, recounts how honeybees caused untold miseries for the people during winter. He said, “When the solid sugar gunny bags turns semi fluid after getting wet in rain, it attracts a considerable number of honeybees. The insects bite the visitors as well as the fair price shop workers.”N Udhaykumar, Chennai president of Revolutionary Youth Federation of India, affiliated to CPI(M-L), rues that despite repeated representations, the authorities have not attempted to give the fair price shops a facelift. “During the last five years, the DMK government has done nothing to improve these shops. We want the new regime to take steps at war footing,” he said.When contacted, official sources with the Department of Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection stated that the authorities were desperately scouting for other buildings to shift the fair price shops. “Once we find an alternate site, the existing fair price shops will be moved,” the official asserted.
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