The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Tiruchi News : Cracker business not so roaring

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi

Cracker business not so roaring

By R. Krishnamoorthy

TIRUCHI, NOV. 8 . The Festival of Lights this year has not brightened the prospects of cracker business. Cracker sales have come down compared to previous years, enquiries reveal.

Wholesale and retail dealers blame it on poor purchasing power of customers, especially the farmers, who have been battered by successive droughts. The favourable monsoons this year, they analyse, would reflect positively on their business only next year.

The dealers say that on an average, customers stop with making less than 50 per cent of their usual purchases. Sale of crackers has picked up rather slow and though the dealers have almost reconciled themselves to their `depleting' business, they still nurse a hope of getting a little beyond the break-even stage, since quite a few special variety crackers have hit the market this year.

Meanwhile, the retail dealers have been instructed by the Explosives Department to sell their wares only under concrete roofs. They are required to have fire extinguishers, adequate quantity of water and sand, to lessen the impact of accidental fire. Retail dealers have been strictly prohibited from selling crackers on platforms.

The dealers, on their part, have taken care to confine their stocks to branded products. The reason, according to the president of Tiruchi Crackers Traders' Association, A.M. Sahabar Sadiq Ali, is that they could rest assured of the proportion of chemicals used for making the crackers, in strict adherence to safety norms prescribed by the Explosives Department and the decibel level stipulated by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. Most of the 20 whole sale dealers and nearly 170 retail dealers have cooperated with the departments concerned to take precautionary measures, Mr. Ali said, adding that customers were being given a list of advices, which includes bursting of crackers on open ground, avoiding the use of crackers in the vicinity of huts, washing hands thoroughly after bursting crackers, in order to remove particles of harmful chemicals such as `senthuram'.

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