Hyderabad: Ration shop dealers are queuing up before the state government to withdraw their licences and close shops.
The state has 17,500 ration shops. Of these, nearly 1,200 dealers have submitted applications seeking closure of the shops, claiming that they are unable to continue running them due to the mounting losses.
The government has stopped the supply of all essential commodities barring rice through the public distribution system due to which the commission earned by dealers has come down drastically.
Besides, the TS government has tightened the rules to check diversion of PDS rice and black marketing by installing GPS on ration transport vehicles and biometric devices in ration shops that are connected to the central server in civil supplies head office.
Diversion and black marketing, which were once major revenue earners for the dealers, have now been brought down to a minimum.
As running of ration shops has therefore become financially unviable, the dealers have decided to go on a strike from August 1.
Their two-forked demand states that the government should either increase their commission or take over the shops and give them a monthly stipend of Rs 30,000 to run it, thereby treating them as government employees.
