People living in Barekot Rural Municipality are reeling under shortage of food grains after the winter crops were destroyed by hailstones this year.

The hailstones ruined the ready-to-harvest wheat and barley among other crops in all nine wards of the rural municipality at the beginning of May. Adding further misery to the villagers is that they could not buy rice from the Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) depot in Ghat.

“I don’t know how we are going to sustain throughout the year. Barekot faces food shortage every year,” local Navaraj Shahi said, adding that their condition has only worsened by the hailstones. Barekot Rural Municipality has a population of around 20,000.

People have demanded Ghat-based NFC food depot to manage 5,000 quintals of rice immediately. Chairman of the rural municipality Mahendra Bahadur Shah said Barekot often faces food shortage due to low production of rice and lacks transport service to supply daily essentials.

People are buying Mota rice at Rs60 per kilo in Barekot. But the NFC has been selling Jira Masino, Mota, Makwanpur and other varieties of rice at Rs36-60 per kilo. NFC Branch Manager in Jajarkot Ram Bahadur Basnet said his office had supplied 9,000 quintals of rice in Barekot. “We still need 10,000 quintals of rice in Barekot. We are facing problems transporting rice to Barekot as it lacks road connectivity,” he said.

Assistant Chief District Officer Janakraj Sharma said a meeting of the District Food Management Committee decided to discuss with the authority concerned for free distribution of 5,000 quintal rice to the victims. “The meeting also discussed on opening an NFC sub-depot in Sakla and a salt depot in Ghat,” he said.