: The shortage of labelling staff at the Beverages Corporation’s (Bevco) warehouse at Tripunithura has seriously affected sales at a number of liquor outlets of both the Consumerfed and Bevco.
Request for stock from 35-odd shops from across the district are already pending with 21 shops approaching the warehouse for stock on Thursday alone. With stocks already depleted in the aftermath of the bumper sales witnessed during Vishu, the situation may worsen in the to coming days.
The expiry of the tenure of 15 temporary labelling staff has led to the immediate crisis. The warehouse has found it difficult to meet labelling target with the exponential growth in consumption since the closure of bars with just 20 permanent staff .
While the Bevco is seized of the situation, a solution is unlikely to emerge overnight. Since the temporary staff can be appointed only through the employment exchange, the recruitment process including interviewing of potential candidates from the list would take its own time. Though staff shortage remains the primary reason, the increased consumption through the beer and wine parlours and retail outlets have also added to the problem. Though the warehouse has received demand for fresh stock of hard liquor, the biggest demand has been for beer.
As things stand, meeting even the pending demand, forget the new ones, is unlikely to happen any time soon. The Consumerfed shop at Vytilla, which ran out of its entire stock by Tuesday evening, is one of the worst affected and hardly did any business for the second consecutive day. The outlet not even had a beer to spare by Tuesday night much to the chagrin of consumers.
Consumerfed sources said that the situation at outlets at Kadavanthra, near High Court junction, and Thoppumpady has not been promising with the low cost brands almost fully exhausted.
