Milk products turn scarce, courtesy wedding season

Milk products turn scarce, courtesy wedding season
Archit Watts
Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 6
Despite efforts of the local administration and milk plants, city residents are facing acute shortage of milk products, especially cheese these days.

The milk plants are finding it difficult to procure the required quantity of milk as the demand has already gone up across the state for making sweets during the ongoing wedding season.

A quick survey of the market revealed that most of the shops of Surya, a major manufacturer of milk products, were running out of stock. Similarly, other sweet shops, dealing in milk products were also facing shortage of cheese.

“We have already taken buffer orders from market to supply cheese. So, the quantity which we get from the plant is being supplied to those consumers,” said Anup Kumar, who owns a Surya shop in Shastri Nagar here.

He added, “Cheese was earlier available at Rs 130 per kg, but now with the increase in demand, the price has also shot up. However, even then there is no availability of cheese in the market as the companies do not have adequate supply of milk”.

A visit to sweet shops and dairies also revealed the same facts that the wedding season which will continue till the end of this month has led to the shortage of cheese in the market.

“We have stopped the supply of milk and other products for the time being. At present, we are only supplying cheese which we manufacture in a day to local ‘halwais’, as they had already given us advance money,” said Des Raj, a dairy owner at Nanak Nagar.

In villages, too, farmers, especially Gujjars, have been storing milk for khoa and other milk products.

On the other hand, a housewife, Sangeeta Sharma, said the prices of most of milk products had gone up due to the wedding season. “We are being forced to pay more money for milk products and the shortage is likely to continue for 15 more days,” she added.

Due to this scarcity, complaints of black marketing are also being received. However, officials of civil administration said they had launched a drive to check the authenticity of these products and were also monitoring the prices of milk products.