LAHORE - The district administration has given a free rein to the profiteering mafia, leaving the public in the lurch. Middlemen have been cashing in on lack of proper and effective mechanism while the price control teams have been dragging their feet over the matter.
Couple of days ago, a handout cited the provincial chief executive as directing his fleet to take notice of the surging prices. Popular for taking notice of almost everything in the larger public interest, Shahbaz Sharif chaired a review meeting on flood and price fixing, the handout said on September 19. The government has deputed more than 20 magistrate-led teams to monitor price but their performance can be evaluated by visiting any shop that has been selling utility stuff on unusual prices.
However, the shopkeepers are of the view that they have been compelled to sell daily use items, especially fruits and vegetables on the rates which are way more than what the government has fixed in the price lists because they will have to buy such commodities on high rates from the wholesale markets. They said that how could they sell a commodity purchased for Rs90 from wholesale market at Rs60: for instance the rate of banana in the fruit market is Rs90 to Rs95 while the government has fixed it at Rs58 in price lists, which is not justified.
Muhammad Hussain, a fruit seller in Chah Miran, said that the price magistrates were conducting raids on the retailers only and arresting them with imposing fines.
The government officials instead of checking and controlling prices in the wholesale markets are targeting only those retailers who are not overcharging and are getting nominal profit, said Mukhtar Ahmad, a greengrocer in Baghbanpura. He added that nobody was daring enough to raid the wholesale markets because most of the wholesalers were influential persons and were minting money through hoarding and profiteering.
In fact the district administration has failed to make any price-control mechanism and to maintain any check and balance between the rates charged by wholesalers and retailers which is the most important thing needed to be focused for controlling price hike, said Sheikh Khadim, a retailer.
The district administration, perhaps due to poor mechanism, has failed to eradicate the ‘middleman’ mafia from the vegetable and fruit markets which has already been complained and identified by the experts as the main cause of price rocketing, the retailers further maintained.
They described the mafia, comprising of the most powerful persons in the vegetable and fruit markets, is functioning allegedly under the cover of some political figures, bureaucrats and officials of City District Government Lahore (CDGL).
“The powerful groups of such people have turned into a mafia and they have complete control within the boundaries of almost all the vegetable markets of the city and they also are known as ‘market grabbers’”, said a vendor Abdul Khaliq.
He said these mafia members apparently are doing their business of buying and purchasing of vegetables directly from the growers and farmers, coming from far-flung areas of the province and reselling of such commodities to the wholesalers, retailers and other small vendors.
Although, these mafia members are playing a role as middlemen but in fact they are buying and selling different products to the main dealers at the rates of their own choice.
They usually act like ‘underworld bosses’, controlling all the markets. They also extort money from the venders in the name of market fees and other dues for allowing them to continue their businesses, this scribe discovered after a survey.
Meanwhile, Provincial Minister for Food Punjab Bilal Yaseen and District Coordination Officer Capt (r) Muhammad Usman visited different parts of city to check the prices of essential commodities on Tuesday.
The minister and the DCO visited Kahna and Baghbanpura markets and inspected the quality of essential commodities, rate lists, besides inquiring the customers whether shopkeepers were selling essential commodities on fixed price or not. The DCO stated, on the occasion, that the price control magistrates were active and were sending shopkeepers behind bars on the complaint of overcharging. He said that the CDGL would utilise all its efforts to curb overcharging and hoarding from the city and no negligence would be tolerated on the part of any price control magistrate.