The government on Tuesday started drives against illegal hoarding of rice as the prices of the staple has gone up even during the harvesting time.

The food ministry officials said that three teams were formed comprised of the ministry officials while five other teams consisted of the officials from the food directorate.

The district administrations have been asked to form a required number of teams to conduct drives in the districts, they added.

The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection director Monjur Mohammad Shariar told New Age that 19 teams of DNCRP conducted drives in 20 markets across the country and realised Tk 4, 34,000 for illegal hoarding of rice.

The authorities launched the drives a day after prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the weekly cabinet asked the ministries concerned for actions against illegal rice hoarding and to find out reasons of spiraling rice price.

‘We are collecting information from all districts about rice mills and traders. Drive will be strengthened soon,’ he said. The food ministry’s deputy secretary Md Harun-ar-Rashid on Tuesday evening told New Age that a team went to Babu Bazar whole sale rice market around 4:00pm to monitor the market and check whether any illegal hoarding was there.

‘Very unfortunately, as we entered a shop, almost all shopkeepers shut their stores down and took off,’ he said, adding that they could not check whether or not there was illegal hoarding.

He said that the main target of the team was to check the licence of the shopkeepers whether they stored rice accordingly or not.

There were around 200 whole sale rice stores in the market, the officials said, adding that they would take legal actions against the shopkeepers not cooperating with the government.

Traders at Krishi Market in the capital’s Mohammadpur also shut down their shops when the DNCRP’s market monitoring team went to conduct a drive against illegal storage of rice.

Food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder declared that drives would continue across the country against the illegal rice hoarders who would face legal actions, according to an official release.

The decision was taken at a meeting held at the Secretariat.

The meeting also decided to send letters to the deputy commissioners, upazila nirbahi officers, National Security Intelligence, Rapid Action Battalion and Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection to tackle the crisis created by the illegal hoarding of rice.

The food ministry also opened a control room, asking people to inform them about illegal rice hoarding.