Goa to launch drive against sub-standard stationers

The Goa government will launch a special drive, before the new academic year begins later this month, against stationary shops selling sub-standard items to students, an official said Saturday.

"We have received complaints from parents that stationary shops are violating the packaged commodity rules. The drive is our way of making sure that students are not cheated by such shop owners," V.R. Naik, director of the legal metrology department, previously known as the weights and measures department, told reporters here.

Some of the items students and their parents need to check for their quality before buying include notebooks, erasers and quality of plastic used to make tiffin boxes, Naik said.

The most common practice by stationary store owners, he said, was selling notebooks which are smaller than the size mentioned on them.

"They try to save paper by printing notebooks smaller than the size they are supposed to print and sell," Naik said. The other common item sold to unsuspecting students is erasers made of cheap rubber, he added

Stationary goods bought a year before, too, are sold in most stores at revised rates. "Rates once fixed cannot be changed but that happens often too," the official said.

He said that violators of the packaged commodity rules would be brought to book before schools in Goa open after summer break.