PESHAWAR, Aug 4: The Utility Stores Corporation (USC) opened 1,100 stores and 22 warehouses during the first month of the current financial year to help extend cheap and quality edibles to consumers in the country.
After the opening of new stores, the total strength has swelled to 2,100 in the country.
The federal government in its annual budget for the current fiscal had announced opening of 5,000 utility stores at the level of every union council and 22 warehouses in different parts of the country.
“Target for the month of July was the opening of 1,000 stores. However, the corporation succeeded in launching 1,100 stores,” disclosed Brig (Retd) Hafeez Ahmad, Managing Director, Utility Stores Corporation (USC), while talking to newsmen here on Friday.
He said in the next phase, to be initiated in August and September, the corporation is going to open 1,500 stores and in the third phase, 250 more stores would be opened in targeted areas in October, November and December.
About network of stores in the NWFP, he said before July 2007, the total strength of the stores was 236 and the target was opening of 214 more. But, with the efforts of the regional managers, we not only achieved the target of 450 stores, rather surpassed it by 37 more stores.
Similarly, he said before July the province had tree regional offices at Peshawar, Abbottabad and D.I. Khan, but now the corporation had established regional offices in Bannu, Kohat, Mardan, Gilgit, Mansehra and Muzaffarabad while a sub-warehouse had also been established in Chitral.
Brig (Retd) Hafeez Ahmad said the newly-established regional offices of Kohat, Bannu and others had been provided staff etc to provide cheap but quality edibles to the people. He said the corporation was making efforts to open maximum number of stores for provision of best quality items and extend them maximum relief in purchase of edibles.
Giving a break-up of the network of utility stores in NWFP, he said Abbottabad has 56, Bannu 36, Gilgit 27, Kohat 38, Mansehra 43, Mardan 55, Muzaffarabad 17, Peshawar 83 and Swat 69 stores.
Similarly, he said with expansion of network, they had also brought improvement in the monitoring system.
In response to a question regarding internal accountability, he said the corporation never compromises on the matter of quality and in case of complaints not only returns goods to the suppliers, rather also blacklists them for future.
He claimed that consumers buying products worth Rs1,000 from utility stores would save Rs330.