Photo: TDM
Srikrishtapur, a small village located in the Akkelpur municipality area of Joypurhat district, has emerged as a hub for handmade potato chips in Bangladesh. Around 400 families in this village earned prosperity by producing potato dried chips on a commercial basis.
The chips made in this village have gained immense popularity in different districts of the country, including Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong, and Rajshahi.
For the past three months, almost every house in the village has been cooking potatoes from noon to late at night. The boiled potatoes are cut into round shapes and dried in the sun in open spaces on the banks of the Tulsiganga river, embankment, roads, and ponds.
The people of the village, including children and young adults, are busy making these chips. About 85 percent of the villagers are involved in the manufacture and sale of potato chips. This work is their only source of income throughout the year, and by making potato chips, they have been able to overcome their financial constraints.
According to Aleya Khatun and Azgarh Ali, who are engaged in making potato chips, Cardinal variety of potato is used in making chips. Chips made with other varieties of potatoes do not taste as good. Cardinal potatoes are bought from the market for Tk 500 to Tk 520 per maund. After boiling the potatoes, they are cut into rounds and dried in the sun to make chips. Five cardinal potatoes make one ounce of chips, and they are sold at Tk 4,500 to 5,500 per maund.
Shahadul Islam, a local potato chip maker, said that he bought 55 maunds of potatoes and made chips. It costs him about Tk 20,00 to make one maund of dried chips, which takes two days. One maund of chips is sold wholesale in the market for three and a half thousand taka, making a profit of Tk 1500 in two days. If fried in oil and sold by hand, the profit increases to Tk 4 to 5 thousand.
Handmade potato chips are also in great demand in the local market. After meeting the local demand, these potato chips are again supplied to different districts of the country, including the capital. The moneylenders came and took the potato chips. Again they themselves supply potato chips to different districts of the country.
Mayor of Akkelpur Municipality, Shahidul Alam Chowdhury, said that due to the manufacture of potato chips in Srikrishtapur village, potatoes are being widely used as food. If the government provides loan assistance on easy terms to the families involved in this industry, then these families will make a huge contribution to the rural economy.
Akkelpur Upazila Agriculture Officer Imran Hossain suggested that if multi-purpose use of potato can be ensured, new jobs will be created for men as well as women. On the other hand, the potato farmers will be assured of a fair price for the potatoes they produce.
Liton Chandra Ghosh, deputy director of Jaipurhat BCIC, expressed interest in supporting the new entrepreneurs who have been created in Srikrishtapur village. He said that if they contact them, they will try to give them loans on easy terms.
TDM/MI
