PANIC buying which has emptied many shelves in each of Wellington’s supermarkets should not all be blamed on shoppers, town and county councillor John Thorne said this week.

Cllr Thorne, a single parent of two young sons, said he was among many Wellington and Rockwell Green people who were currently unable to buy products such as toilets rolls, kitchen towel, pasta, and some fruit and vegetables.

However, Cllr Thorne said he laid the blame for the shortages squarely on supermarket managers and not their customers.

He said: “Managers of supermarkets have stood by and watched their tills jingle as shoppers emptied their shelves, and they have compounded the situation by clearly failing to re-order sufficient stock.

“I can see that many people have been very selfish and rushed out to buy as much as they can for themselves as the virus crisis became worse.

“But they are people who feel scared and threatened, and it is a natural human reaction to try to protect yourself and your loved ones.

“The managers of our supermarkets should have taken quick action to limit sales per customer when they saw this sudden rush so there would be more to go round, and they should straight away have been on the phone to their head offices to organise more deliveries.

“They may say they did what they could, but to me it does not look like it.

“I worked for Tesco for nine years, so I know a bit about the food supply chain and can see where it has gone wrong.

“The Government is telling us there is plenty of food in the supply chain and no need for anybody to go short, and that is very true.

“For instance, there is no shortage of toilet rolls despite the empty supermarket shelves.

“I have personally seen in the past couple of days thousands and thousands of toilet rolls sitting in a warehouse when they should be on the shelves of our supermarkets so that I and others can buy them.”

Cllr Thorne said he would take up the issue with Wellington’s MP Rebecca Pow when the crisis was over and questions were asked about how it might have been handled better.