10,000 containers of aravana go waste

SABARIMALA: Low quality jaggery for the production of aravana prasadam at Lord Ayyappa temple was detected on Tuesday late evening. The poor quality of aravana prasadam manufactured by using the low quality jaggery was found when a batch of aravana containers kept in the godown broke open and leaked on Tuesday evening.Around 10,000 containers of aravana prasadam were dumped near the incinerator at Malikappuram. Sabarimala devaswom executive officer M Satheeshkumar said that around 30,000 kg of low quality jaggery was sent back to the contractors, following the detection of the poor quality.  Satheeshkumar said that samples of the low quality jaggery were sent to the Regional Research Laboratory, Thiruvananthapuram and another sample was sent to the Food Laboratory in Pathanamthitta on Wednesday morning.Action would be taken against the contractors after getting the report from the laboratory, he said.Satheeshkumar said that adequate quantity of aravana prasadam was with the devaswom for meeting the demands of the pilgrims.  The devaswom has a stock of 6.5 lakh aravana prasadam containers for distribution to the pilgrims at present, with a daily production of around two lakh containers. In addition, a buffer stock of five lakh kg of quality jaggery is in the devaswom godown.