Cheap price, not freshness, attracts them

Kathmandu, March 27:

Local restaurants and small hotels usually buy damaged and partially decayed vegetables on heavy discount, according to vegetable sellers at the Kalimati Wholesale and Retail Market.

Yam Prasad Bhurtel, a retail vegetable seller in Kalimati, said most of the hotel and eatery staffers are interested not in the freshness of vegetables but in cheaper prices. “They never care for the quality,” he told this daily. He said they usually sell such damaged vegetables on discount ranging from 50 to 80 per cent.

Around 500 metric tonnes of vegetables are brought in the valley from different parts of the country every day, out of which one per cent gets damaged while being transported and around 10 per cent get damaged in storage.

The retail shop owners usually sell their vegetables on heavy discount fearing that the vegetables could become completely rotten when stocked for many days.

“People in hotel business generally come in the early morning or evening and buy low quality vegetables at maximum discount,” Bhurtel said, adding, “It’s good for both of us as our vegetables don’t get wasted and hotels get them at a cheaper rate.”

A tomato wholeseller at Kalimati fruit and vegetable market, Hari Koirala, said they bring up to 10 trucks of tomatoes in the Valley every day.

“One truck carries around 10 tonnes,” he said, adding in every truck about 100 kg tomatoes get soiled while being transported.

“We sell a 10 kg bag of tomatoes with fresh and lightly damaged vegetables for Rs 50 in the evening and people rush to buy it,” he added.

According to Tarapati Pokhrel, administrative officer at the Kalimati Fruits and Vegetable Market Development Board, the board does not have any mechanism to check the quality of vegetables being sold. “The vegetable sellers are conscious and they do not sell the decayed and damaged vegetables,” he claimed.

According to Dr Shesha Raj Acharya, director of the Naradevi Ayurvedic Hospital, consumption of decayed food can cause diarrhoea, dysentery, jaundice, typhoid and other infectious diseases.