PESHAWAR, Dec 16: Like other parts of the country, Eidul Fitr will be celebrated in the Frontier province on Monday with traditional zeal and fervour.
With three festivals — Eidul Fitr, Christmas and New Year — falling in the later half of December, an upsurge in shopping has been witnessed in the last 10 days of Ramazan.
The fun-loving people of the province bought suitable items to match the season with the winter getting more cold and biting. Although the shopping spree registered a slowdown after 28th of Ramazan, the rush at bazaars and shopping malls remained the same.
Talking to Dawn, families, individual shoppers and shopkeepers at Saddar, Qissa Khwani, Khyber Bazaar, Karkhano Markets, Kochi Bazaar and other big and small shopping malls said they had varied experience while buying different items.
A majority of the shoppers complained of very high prices of all items on sale in all bazaars and markets and said they were never satisfied with whatever they had bought as all the shopkeepers, with a negligible exception, were profiteering by charging the people too much for all items.
“When the shopkeeper settles down for half the price of an item he had first asked, you can never be satisfied with either the price or the quality of the goods,” said Mir Salam, who was trying to buy a Shalwar Kameez suit.
A cloth merchant, Iqbal Khan, whose shop at the Saddar’s Shafi Market gave an untidy look, while pointing to the empty shelves, said the shopping spree had dwindled quite much and the stock had almost exhausted. “Now we have almost no customers as all buyers have already bought what they needed for the Eid,” he said.
When asked about haggling witnessed between shopkeepers and customers, Iqbal said it was bad for customers’ confidence. ‘‘When you charge somebody more than the justified price or the market rate, he would never come back to your shop, because his confidence is hurt.’’
