The deputy commissioner of Chandpur had to engage himself in crowd control yesterday when hundreds poured in at his office premises and bought three tonnes of onion at Tk 45 per kilogram.

DC Mazedur Rahman Khan facilitated the sale on the premises of the DC office in Chandpur town around 10:00am, reports our correspondent in Chandpur.

Hearing that onion would be sold at fair price at the DC’s office, hundreds of people had gathered there, the DC said adding that they had to use loudspeakers to control the large crowd and allotted one kg onion for each individual. 

Additional Deputy Commissioner SM Zakaria, Executive Magistrate Samiul Islam, Chandpur Sports Council General Secretary Golam Mostofa and other government officials assisted the DC during the sale.

TCB has sufficient onions in stock and the government will organise onion sale in every upazila of the district every day, DC Mazedur said. 

They have plans to sell three tonnes of onion every day in each upazila, but dealers are urgently needed in the upazilas for the task, he added.

Meanwhile, in Bagerhat, TCB started selling onions at Tk 45 each kg to curb its price at the open market.

The sale was organised from the morning on the premises of the Bagerhat DC office where a large number of people stood in line for two to five hours, our Bagerhat correspondent reports. 

Members of police and the district administration supervised the sale.

However, a number of buyers expressed their dissatisfaction as there was a limit of one kg onion for each buyer.

Rickshaw puller Masum Sheikh said, “The lion’s share of the public’s earning is now being spent on buying only one kg of onion. Under the circumstances, selling onion for Tk 45 a kg is an initiative in the right direction and we want the government to continue this move.”

Rabiul Morshed, head of TCB’s regional office in Khulna, said, “We disbursed 3,000 kg of onion to the dealer in Bagerhat and around 1,000 kg could be sold in one day. Based on the situation, the district administration would decide whether they would increase or decrease the quantity.”