Mother and two daughters suddenly meet at TCB line

Sufia Begun and her two daughters live separately. The mother lives in Sector no. 14 of Uttara while her elder daughter Sabina Yasmin lives one and a half kilometre away in Pakuria area and her younger daughter Lipa Akter lives in half a kilometre away outside Uttara area.

On Monday, Sufia Begun met both of her daughters all of a sudden when all three came to purchase the essentials at an affordable price from a mobile sale point of the state-owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) on the playground of the Sector 12 in Uttara. Neither of them had any prior knowledge that any of them would be there, let alone to meet each other.

Sufia Begum is a cook at an office in Uttara; her husband Shahed Ali sells green coconut. Sabina Yesmin is a homemaker; her husband Ayub Ali is a plumber and he earns Tk 600 a day; the couple has a son and a daughter. Lipa Akter is also a homemaker; her husband Abdus Salam is a marketing executive and he earns Tk 9,000 a month; the couple has a son.

This correspondent talked to them around 1:00pm. As per their descriptions, elder daughter Sabina Yasmin came to buy essentials from the TCB truck around 11:00am. She met younger sister LIpa Akter after a while. The two sisters were having chitchat and all of a sudden, they saw their mother Sufia Begum coming.

Sufia Begum told Prothom Alo there are four members in his family and three of them, including Sufia Begum herself, her husband and her son, earn regularly. Yet, they cannot manage their daily expenses. She has not feeling well for some days and that adds up the medical cost. However, she never stood in the TCB line even before.

Sabina Yasmin was saddened thinking that her mother had to be in the line despite her illness. “I could not even assist my mother a bit. And such is the condition that my husband works for three days a week and he has nothing to do for the remaining days,” she told Prothom Alo.

Younger daughter Lipa Akter said she brought several kilograms of flours to her mother’s home a month ago. She told Prothom Alo they have been purchasing rice from the open market sale (OMS) programme for the past several months. Rice is sold at Tk 30 a kg at OMS run by the food department. They also purchase edible oil, lentils, onion and sugar from TCB’s sales point. Though they have to wait in the TCB line, it saves them the money.

Lipa Akter said she has a one-and-a-half-year old son and it has become difficult for her to work somewhere keeping the child alone.

Both sisters said their another sister Salma left Dhaka and went to in-laws’ house in Mymensingh as they she could not manage daily expenses. Salma’s husband now lives in a mess in the capital.

As the truck of TCB arrived around 2:00pm, the conversation with this mother and her two daughters could not go further. They were waiting at the back end of the playground and the truck stopped in front of the playground. Seeing the truck, they ran towards it like other people waiting for the truck.

Since none of ailing Sufia Begum and her daughters Sabina Begun and Lipa Akter, both holding child in their laps, could not walk fast, they got their spots at the end of the line.

There is a less crowd as the truck arrived late with 31 women and 27 men separately lining up there. Sufia Begum and her two daughters purchased the goods around 3:00pm.

M/S Mishal Enterprise is the TCB’s distributors for Uttara sector 12. The firm brought 1,000 kg of gram and onions each, 500 kg of lentils and sugar each and 250 bottles of 2-litre soybean oil on a TCB truck on Monday.

A customer can purchase maximum five kg of onions, four kg of gram, two kg of lentils and sugar each and a bottle of soybean oil. Traders sell these certain essentials in a package at Tk 810.

Sales representative of the TCB’s distributor Shariful Islam told Prothom Alo loading of goods took 10-15 more minutes as grams were added to the inventory along with edible oil, sugar, lentils and onions and the truck arrived late due to traffic congestion.

Sales also continued until 4:00pm with 97 women and 78 men waiting in line to buy the essentials. Crowd was increasing as time passed.

Seller Shariful Islam told Prothom Alo around 8:00pm on Monday sales stopped at 7:30pm and 20-25 people returned empty handed as goods were stocked out.

The government on Sunday reduced the price of bottled Soybean oil by Tk 8 a litre. Price of a five-litre soybean oil bottle was also slashed by Tk 35 and price of loose soybean oil was cut by Tk 7 a litre.

Sellers, however, said the newly fixed price might make several days to come into effect, as edible oil companies are yet to start marking the oil at new prices.

Loose soybean oil was sold at Tk 155 a litre at the grocery shop Abdur Rab Enterprise on the ground floor of the Karwan Bazar kitchen market in the capital on Monday. Seller Md Palash told Prothom Alo, “We purchase the loose soybean oil at Tk 154.42 a litre and sells at Tk 155 a litre. Soybean oil with reduced price will be available in the market soon.”