Low-income people’s hours-long wait for TCB goods ends in disappointment

Farida Begum sells bottles of water at Hatirjheel and also works as a house help for several families at Rampura in Dhaka. But her income has now dried up in the coronavirus lockdown.

She struggles to put food on the table in time while house rent hangs over her like an impossibility as her husband had walked out on her. The landowner asked her to take her stuff and leave.

Farida and her two children are spending their days often without food. She somehow collected some money over the past few days and queued up for groceries sold by dealers of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh on trucks at fair prices for the poor.

Farida has been at it for several days. She failed to buy anything in the two previous days as the truck had nothing to give when she would get to the front of the queue. The truck did not even arrive on Sunday.

Frustrated, she blurted out all her agony. “I’ve been coming here for three days, but I get nothing. They give four to five litres of oil to people they know, leaving nothing for us.”

Low-income people queue to buy cheap groceries from a TCB dealer.

“They then depart promising more trucks will arrive. But that does not happen. I’d once returned home after waiting until 5pm.”

“Now how are we supposed to eat? I live in a small tin-shed home. The landlord is threatening to lock up the house. He keeps coming to me for rent. I can’t pay up my rent, nor can I eat.”

“My elder son died in an accident 10 years ago. One of the sons lives separately with his family after marriage, and the third one suffers from disabilities. The youngest is just 10 years old. I have no idea how things are going to get better.”

Like Farida, several hundred other low-income people in Rampura had to return with nothing after waiting for hours since the dawn for fair price sale.

They counted hours standing at Rampur Bazar in front of the BRAC Bank. Later police drove them away around 10:30am with no sign of the truck at its usual location.

However, after the group of people were asked to return, a TCB truck appeared in front of Rampura TV centre after 11am, about a hundred yards away from its usual spot and hundreds of people streamed near it.

But this truck sells oil, sugar and pulses until 3pm. If the products run out, hundreds of people return empty-handed.

Moni Begum waits to buy cheap groceries from a TCB dealer after several failed bids.

One of them, Abdul Alim said a TCB truck came at 9:30am, but did not stop after seeing the huge crowd.

Many others were waiting nearby for rice sold under the Open Market Sale programme for the poor. They, too, had to return home with nothing as the rice never arrived.  

Another house help, Moni Begum said she had borrowed some money to buy some rice. “I don’t have a job that would allow me to buy rice from the shops and eat.”

Shahnaz Parvin, who came from Wapda Road to buy oil and lentil, said: “We stand here for so many hours. Doing so raises the risk of infection. If the government controlled the market prices, women wouldn't have to go out like this.”

Housewife Salma Sultana also complained about the TCB truck not arriving without notice. “Won’t we catch the coronavirus if we wait outside?” 

Babu Enterprise is the dealer tasked with distributing goods in Rampura on Sunday.

“It’s not possible for us to provide everyone with the goods all the time with the limited allocation we have,” said the organisation’s owner Anwar Hossain Babu.