Kollam: The crisis prevailing in Supplyco has gone up as the temporary workers have started leaving the corporation citing non payment of their salaries. With the distributors too joining the fray by withdrawing their stocks on account of non payment, the situation has aggravated further. The stores have become literally empty and the corporation is in an urgent need for a working capital of Rs. 500 crores.  If the funds can’t be raised in quick time, then the stores will have to be closed  down. 

Earlier, employees could sort the stocks arriving at the stores from depots as subsidised and non-subsidised items. But now, non-subsidised items are sent to the stores separately. It has been months since Supplyco received subsidised rice. Only a very few people are arriving at the stores these days to purchase peas and coconut oil at subsidised rates. No new stocks of sugar arrived at the stores since Onam last year. At the moment, stocks which have been piled up for months are being sold at the stores. 

When the market prices of rice had gone up, several customers had purchased subsidised rice from the Supplyco stores. These customers often ended up purchasing other items as well, which used to translate into profits for the corporation. However, of late, the distributors stopped supplying items to the stores due to faulty payments. The unsold items piled up at the stores resulted in huge losses for the Supplyco. Distributors have started taking back several items from the stores. 

On top of this, the employees at the Supplycos have been asked to remove a few more items from the outlets as part of stock taking to be held in March. Hence, the majority of the stores are now empty with very less staff on duty. This is a drastic fall taking into consideration that a few of the stores used to generate revenues up to Rs 1 crore every month, but now the monthly collections of most of the stores fall below Rs 10 lakhs.

The situation is so bad that the permanent employees, those in deputation, temporary and contract employees of the Supplyco stores have not received their salaries for some time now. Those engaged in packing work have quit their jobs. Only three employees are working at many of the stores on a rotation basis. Almost 20 people used to work in these sstores earlier.