Berhampur: Dhanteras lost its sheen for a jewellery showroom here Monday as it had to shell out a fine for conducting business with a weighing machine that had outlived its statutory working period.
A team of Weights and Measure department led by Sub Collector Digant Routray conducted raids at jewellery showrooms and shops here and fined one of them Rs 50,000.
Jewellers normally do brisk business on Dhanteras as it is believed that Goddess Laxmi ‘visits’ and showers her blessings on homes where gold is purchased on this day; the belief leads to people making a beeline for jewellery shops. Taking advantage of the rush, some unscrupulous businessmen tend to cheat customers.
“It is noticed that customers never doubt the shop owners and the salesmen. They just believe the tag that mentions the weight of the jewellery and buy them without checking whether or not it is accurate. This is why we conducted the raids,” a member of the raiding party said.
Routray said that during the raids they did not find a single customer even for once asking the showroom owners to show them if the weighing machines were working accurately. They just relied on them and purchased. “We found a shop was using a weighing machine whose statutory period had long expired. The shop owner was selling gold after weighing it on this machine,” Routray said.
The shop owner was fined Rs 5000 for the offence.
The team comprising additional tehsildar Gopalkrushna Adhikary, assistant controller Binay Kumar Das, senior inspector Satyajit Biswal and Shishir Kumar Sahu will conduct similar raids in the coming days too, informed Routray.
On the other hand, the jewellery showrooms and shop owners termed the timing of the raids as “inopportune”. They alleged that the raids had hampered their business in a big way. “The raids made their customers change their perception about the showrooms and thus their goodwill was adversely affected”, one of them complained.
With the price of gold rising for some time, business has not been so encouraging in the past few days. “We were waiting for Dhanteras. If the department had to conduct the raids, they could have done it on any day before Dhanteras,” said another distraught shop owner.
PNN