People in Kashmir face acute shortage of essentials due to curfew

Srinagar, Aug 27 (UNI) People in the Kashmir valley continued to face acute shortage of essential commodities due to indefinite curfew for the past four days.

However, a high level meeting chaired by Governor N N Vohra has appealed to shopkeepers to open their establishments during relaxation period so that people could purchase essentials.

It has also asked the milk federation, working in the valley, to make milk available to people in different parts of the city.

The federations have been directed to contact police control room for obtaining necessary passes so that they could operate during curfew and relaxation period.

However, people from almost all parts of the valley complained about the shortage of essentials, particularly milk for kids.

''Due to curfew we could not move out of our houses to bring milk for their children and purchase other essentials,'' they said.

They further added that they could not store milk, bread, vegetables and other essentials after authorities suddenly imposed curfew.

People said due to lack of milk, they had to drink ''kahwa'' instead of traditional Namkeen tea. There was shortage of bread as the bakers were not allowed by the security forces to prepare bread, people from most areas in the civil line, uptown and Shar-e-Khas told UNI over phone.

As the Consumers Affair and Public Distribution (CA&PD) stores were empty even before the imposition of the curfew, they had no ''atta'' to prepare bread at home. ''We could not purchase atta from the market as shops also remained closed.'' Many people complained that ration depots were without ration despite government claim that hundreds of trucks carrying essential commodities were arriving here daily from Jammu.

People complained that security forces were not allowing even milkmen, coming from outskirts for distributing of milk in the city.

However, residents of Nowgam, Banapora, Azadbasti, Budshah Nagar and other areas in the uptown said the milkman were allowed to distribute milk today.

UNI BAS BDP DS1210