1st November 2015

- The Hindu

Drive to check sale of Chinese crackers

With Deepavali round the corner, a district-level squad has started to check for any sale of Chinese fire crackers across the district.

Officials said the government has not permitted import and sale of Chinese crackers.

Four-member team

Hence, following a direction, the Collector had formed a four-member team to keep an eye on sale of Chinese crackers in the district.

Kandipan, Inspector of Police, Ponnai, S. Narasimhan, Tahsildar of Vellore Flying Squad and two representatives from the Fire and Rescue Services and Vellore Corporation were members of the squad.

“The State government has banned sale of Chinese crackers. We launched the drive to inspect the crackers kept for sale in outlets on Wednesday. We inspected the crackers kept at the Karpagam cooperative supermarket,” S. Narasimhan, member of the squad said.

Outlets inspected

On Thursday, the team inspected cracker outlets in Vellore Town including at Officers Line, Kagithapattarai and Long Bazaar. Nearly 10 outlets have been checked so far.

The team will conduct inspections in shops and godowns storing crackers across the district till Deepavali, he added.

Some of the cracker boxes contained Chinese letters printed on them. It also said that it has been ‘manufactured in technical collaboration with Standard Fireworks China Ltd’.

The officials said that they sought a clarification from the manufacturer in this regard. The machine was imported from China and it was found to be a printing error.

It was confirmed that the crackers were manufactured in Sivakasi, they said.

In case, Chinese crackers were found in any shops in the district, the stock would be seized and legal action will be taken on those who sell the banned crackers, officials added.