The government on Sunday directed state-owned companies that supply essential commodities, such as food and petroleum products, to stay on their toes and ensure areas affected by floods and landslides do not experience shortage of those products.

The instruction was issued by the Ministry of Supplies to Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), Salt Trading Corporation (STC) and Nepal Food Corporation (NFC), among others, after incessant rainfall of the past few days triggered floods and landslides in the southern belt of the country.

“We will distribute packets of rice, pulses, oil and salt in the flood and landslide affected areas from Monday,” Supplies Secretary Prem Kumar Rai said.

These essentials, according to Rai, will be distributed based on demand made by consumers’ committees that are led by chief district officers of various districts. 

“We will be distributing rice and salt from depots of NFC and STC located in various districts, while pulses and cooking oil will be dispatched from the central level,” Rai said. 

NFC has a stock of 17,700 tonnes of food, mainly rice, a staple food, across the country.

It has 780 tonnes of rice in Birtamod, 407.6 tonnes of the same food product in Biratnagar, 2,358 tonnes in Lahan, 330 tonnes in Janakpur, 1,289 tonnes in Birgunj and 529.3 tonnes in Bhairahawa.

It also has 88 tonnes of rice in Nepalgunj, 935 tonnes in Rajapur, 275 tonnes in Dhangadhi and 3,483 tonnes in Thapathali, Kathmandu.  

To ensure proper supply of food products, the Ministry of Agricultural Development also held a meeting with development partners on Sunday to deliver essentials to people residing in flood and landslide affected areas. 

“We conducted the meeting of the food safety cluster and requested for distribution of relief materials, including water, food items and milk, to those residing in disaster-hit areas,” said Shankar Sapkota, deputy spokesperson at the ministry.

Sapkota informed a separate panel has been formed to get detailed information on the affected areas. 

Another state-owned enterprise, NOC, has also said it has adequate stock of petroleum products in its depots in Thankot and other locations outside the Kathmandu Valley.

NOC Spokesperson Birendra Kumar Goit said Thankot depot has a stock of 2,700 kl of petrol. “We also have adequate stock of petroleum products in Biratnagar,” he said.

But NOC lately has been facing difficulty in supplying petroleum products from Biratnagar depot because of “inundated roadways”. “Also, a number of petroleum tankers has been stranded in a number of highways, including the Tribhuvan Highway, due to the landslides,” Goit said.

The floods and landslides in the Tarai have also affected movement of other cargo vehicles. Rajan Sharma, former president of the Nepal Freight Forwarders’ Association, said a number of cargo containers has been stranded in the Indian territory across the border point in Biratnagar. 

Cargo movement from the Customs Office and Inland Container Depot in Birgunj has also been affected by natural disasters, according to Sharma. 

“However, we are yet to ascertain the actual amount of damages caused to imported goods,” he said, criticising the government “for failing to build necessary infrastructure in major cross-border trading points”. 

“Had the government been prepared to mitigate the risk, the supply situation might not have been affected so much,” he said.