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| October 12, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramzan 7, 1426 |
Profiteers cash in on victims’ plight
LAHORE, Oct 11: To add to the misery of the quake-stricken people who are now being hit by hailstorm and rains, stockists of tents and blankets have either withheld their stocks or exorbitantly increased the prices.
On the other hand, transporters have also started demanding enhanced fares for their trucks to deliver relief goods to the victims in the NWFP and Azad Kashmir.
Many individual philanthropists and organizations who flocked the local market for purchasing tents and blankets found that either these were not available or being sold at much higher rates.
They were disappointed to note that orders for new tents were being booked with one-month delivery time.
Prices of tents have also doubled and local traders put the blame for it on merchants in Karachi.
Nasir Mahmood, a tarpaulin dealer, says a bundle of tent which was earlier available from Karachi for Rs9,000 is now being sold at Rs17,000.
Faisal, another dealer says that stitchers in Kasur have also increased their charges.
Jamaatud Daawa spokesperson Yahya Mujahid says with maximum efforts what they could get was to have order delivery time reduced to one week.
The situation is no better in the blanket market. Faisalabad-made blankets which were earlier available at around Rs200 per piece are now being sold at Rs350 each.
A similar increase has been witnessed in the rates of second-hand and new Korean blankets.
Asked if the price hike was because of setting in of the winter season, proprietors of a blanket shop, who also held merchants in Karachi responsible for the hike, said the impact of the season had never been so much in the past.
Truckers are also making hey as the need for vehicles to transport relief goods to calamity-hit areas is increasing day by day.
The fare for a six-wheel truck for Abbotabad before the quake was Rs9,000 to Rs10,000, but now truckers are charging Rs13,000 for the same distance. Even at these rates vehicles are not available as the organizations engaged in the relief work complain that they are looking for trucks since Monday evening but could not find any despite hectic efforts. Five truckloads of relief goods are lying with the Jamaat-i-Islami and 10 truckloads with the Daawa, the two organizations claim.
Amanullah, running a goods forwarding agency in the city, says that vehicles earlier sent to the calamity-hit areas got stuck up there and could not return. So the truckers are demanding extra charges to cover up any such loss of time.
Another goods transporter, Muhammad Khalid, comes with another excuse. He says the raise in the diesel prices has forced transporters to ground their trucks as they do not find it feasible to ply their vehicles at current fares. But he does not have any explanation for the fact that no such raise in fares is being demanded for other routes in the country.
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