Utility Stores operation suspended after servers outage

ISLAMABAD: The operation at the government’s Utility Stores across the country have been suspended after its servers went down due to technical issues, ARY News reported on Tuesday.

According to details, citizens were facing great difficulties as operation at the government’s Utility Stores were suspended due to server link-down.

In a statement, USC officials said that the server went down and flour entries at the stores were not possible due to the division of the subsidy into two parts.

The officials further said that it was not possible to supply the items due to the technical issue and the public had queued up outside the stores.

Earlier, the government-run utility store corporation (USC) jacked up the prices of sugar, flour and ghee and other food items.

According to the notification issued, the Utility Stores Corporation (USC) increased the price of sugar by Rs19 per kg, ghee by Rs75 per kg, and a 20-kg bag of flour by Rs496.

It is pertinent to mention here that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif had announced to provision of targeted subsidies on basic food items through Utility Stores Corporation. These items included flour, sugar, ghee, rice, and pulses.

Consumers enrolled in the Benazir Income support Program were elagible to get the food items at subsidized rates from the Utility Stores outlets.

Read More: Inflation hits 24.5pc in December

A day earlier, it was reported that inflation, measured by Consumer Price Index (CPI), rose to 24.5pc in December 2022 December on year-on-year (YoY) basis.

On a month-on-month (MoM) basis, the inflation increased to 0.5% in December 2022 as compared to an increase of 0.8% in the previous month, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said in a report on Monday.

Despite around 2.8% slowdown in the index movement, the prices of the majority of the consumer goods remain out of reach of the people.