KARACHI: Citizens waiting for new policy on Bachat bazaars
KARACHI, July 19: The city government had chalked out a comprehensive policy to reactivate the Bachat bazaars of Karachi and make them a consumer-friendly place. This was said a few months back that this revolutionary policy would be practically implemented by June 1, but citizens are still waiting for it.
The concept of setting up Bachat bazaar in Karachi had been introduced in 1985 and initially eight such bazaars were introduced on one-day-a-week basis, on Friday holiday, and hence they were named Jumma bazaars. The basic idea behind the bazaars was to end the role of middlemen so that producers and growers could directly supply their goods to consumers on cheaper rates.
Later, when this idea clicked and buyers thronged these bazaars, the traditional profiteer mafia jumped into the arena and the weekly bazaars mushroomed in Karachi. Experts say that growing political interference and the absence of an effective check on profit-hungry traders marred their utility. At present, there are more than 130 weekly bazaars in Karachi, and they are held not only on holidays but on working days also.
Sources say that political interference is rampant in this sector and every new administration wants to cancel the previous permits and to issue new ones to its favourites. They said that the bazaars was a major source of jobs for educated people, as there had been a ban on government jobs for last 10 years. They said that in Karachi some 20,000 families directly depended on Bachat bazaars for their livelihood.
In pre-partition Karachi, there used to be central markets in the city, roperly manned by inspectors to uphold the writ of law and to safeguard consumers' rights, but later when the city expanded the planners failed to set up new central markets for new localities. The last central market in Karachi was set up in 1974 in Liaquatabad.
The consumers' rights protection circles complain that the Bachat bazaars had been hijacked by the profiteers and hoarders mafia and they were looting the consumers by charging inflated prices. They suggest that these bazaars should be run on the basis of direct marketing and the element of middlemen and profiteering should be ousted from these bazaars to facilitate the masses in real terms. They charge that due to the high margin of profit the present set-up of Bachat bazaars was not in favour of the government or the public, but instead it was providing benefit to the nexus of profiteering traders and corrupt bureaucracy.
Helpline Trust Chairman Hamid Maker when contacted said that despite tall claims of the administration, the ground realities were the same. He said people were calling these bazaars 'Loot bazaars' and 'Chore bazaars'. He said officials price lists were a joke and profiteer businessmen called shots in the bachat bazaars.On the other hand, senior officials of the city government were hinting at introducing drastic changes in the very basic structure of Bachat bazaars to provide relief to the consumers.
On March 31, speaking at a seminar on `Effectiveness of Bachat bazaars’, the EDO for Enterprises and Investment Promotion Department, Syed Abid Ali Shah, had said that after repeated complaints by citizens and consumers' right bodies against these bazaars, the CDGK had decided to introduce a new comprehensive policy to reactivate and make them consumer-friendly. He said that this new policy would be implemented by July 1.
About the main features of the new policy, he said that for traditional traders and entrepreneurs there were many regular markets and bazaars and the Bachat bazaars were not meant for profiteering by these entrepreneurs. He said that the vision of the CDGK about the Bachat bazaars was that every town should have a major Bachat bazaar, properly monitored and regulated by inspectors, to serve as the central market for that town.
He said that according to the vision of city government the Bachat bazaars should have some stalls reserved for jobless youth and women to sell their handicrafts or other wares. He said that under the comprehensive policy of the CDGK, only registered and genuine parties would be allotted stalls in the Bachat bazaars and the role of the middlemen, profiteers and hoarders would be eliminated in the affairs of these bazaars. He said the city government did not want to make money through Bachat bazaars but to help the common man. He said the under this vision the Bachat bazaars should be held only once a week – on Sunday.However, the new policy which was supposed to be implemented from July 1, 2006 seems nowhere, and the local Bachat bazaars are working on the same old pattern.
In this regard, when the EDO for the Enterprises and Investment Promotion Department was contacted on Wednesday, he said the CDGK had finalized the new policy. He said he had been abroad for some time, and now he was optimistic that the new policy on the Bachat bazaars would be implemented in a couple of weeks.—PPI
