By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, August 4, 2019: Odisha food supplies and consumer welfare minister Ranendra Pratap Swain on Saturday dashed off a letter to Union consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan opposing proposed shifting of the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) here to Patna.

The regional office of Central Warehousing Corporation at Bhubaneswar has been playing a vital role in storage and warehousing of various commodities including food grains and notified commodities of Food Corporation of India (FCI) as well as Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation, the letter said.

The regional office established in the year 1990 has now the operational capacity of 3.48 lakh MT catering to the needs of storage at 21 locations in 15 districts spread over the entire state of Odisha.

more than 90 per cent employees working in Bhubaneswar regional office are the local Odia people. Moreover, this region is having 90 per cent occupancy and continuously giving profit during the last five years, he added.

“The recent decision for merger of Bhubaneswar and Patna regions into a single entity and renaming it as Patna region with headquarters at Patna in Bihar will seriously jeopardize the interest of the Odisha people. Monitoring various activities including scientific storage from Patna will be extremely difficult and the progress of warehousing operations in Odisha will be severely hampered and CWC will ultimately incur huge loss,” stated Swain in the letter.

Noting that monitoring of scientific storage from Patna will be difficult, he said warehousing operations in Odisha will be hampered as a result of the proposed relocation. The minister also pointed out that members of the Odisha Assembly, cutting across party lines, have raised their concerns over the issue in the House.

“I would like to request your personal intervention for allowing the regional office at Bhubaneswar to continue as such in modification of the earlier decision of its merger with Patna region,” said Swain in the letter.