KARACHI, July 30: To contain the soaring price hike and to provide a tangible relief to the people against the excesses of profiteers and hoarders, it is a must that all laws against price increases be strictly implemented, experts said on Sunday.
Citizens and consumers' protection bodies are of the opinion that there is no dearth of laws against price hike, but they lacked a willing bureaucracy for the implementation of these laws.
Hamid Maker of Helpline Trust, a consumers' rights body, when contacted said that on paper there were many laws against price hike, profiteering and hoarding, but they were toothless as the administration lacked a strong will and continuity in its actions. He said experience showed that ambitious campaigns against the profiteer and hoarder mafia had suffered miscarriage due to absence of their continuity. He said people were fed up with the farce of launching drives against profiteers and forgetting the whole matter after a few days.
He said implementation was more important than lawmaking. Giving an example, he said according to the law, the sale of things such as gutka, supari and polythene bags was banned in Sindh, but these articles were being openly sold because the administration seemed not interested in the actual implementation of these laws.
He said that to control price hike of daily-use commodities a Consumers' Rights Council under the CPLC was formed some nine months back, but it had yet to take any concrete action against the profiteer and hoarder mafia. He said that in Sindh the Consumer Protection Ordinance 2003 had lapsed due to lack of seriousness of the relevant quarters. He said there was a price control committee but it also seemed toothless against the powerful profiteer and hoarder mafia.
Answering a question regarding giving special magisterial powers to district government officials including DCOs, EDOs and DDOs of Revenue, mukhtiarkars and assistant mukhtiarkars in all districts of Sindh, he said that just giving magisterial powers to some district officials would not make any difference, as these experiments had been done in the past and had failed due to lack of implementation.
He advised the administration to concentrate on continuity of its campaigns and strict implementation of its rules and laws if it really wanted to provide a meaningful and visible relief to citizens.
The chairman of the Consumers Association of Pakistan, Kaukab Iqbal, when contacted, was also of the opinion that the basic issue was not of powers but a strong political will for their implementation.
Referring to the issue of prices of fresh milk, he said the milk-sellers had unilaterally raised these prices from Rs28 per litre to Rs32 per litre during the last half year, but the bureaucracy had yet to take action against them.
Referring to the sugar scam, he said that despite all tall claims of the administration, poor consumers were still forced to buy sugar on inflated rates. He said that people were being hoodwinked that relief was being provided to them through utility stores. He said that in fact thousands of new utility stores were needed in the country if the masses were really to be facilitated.
He said that each union council of the 18 towns of Karachi needed dozens of new utility stores to cater to the needs of their population. He said the promised mobile utility stores still seemed nowhere.
Kaukab Iqbal said that recently the Punjab government had announced opening of consumer courts in its 15 districts to mitigate the sufferings of consumers and put some curbs on the mighty profiteer mafia. He said the Sindh government should follow suit and set up consumer courts in the province.
He said it was a sorry state of affairs that in this 21st century a Pakistani consumer had yet to wait for hours in long queues before utility stores and gas stations for buying sugar for their kitchen and CNG for their vehicles.
He further said that lawyers of his association were mulling to sue the government departments that had failed to implement laws regarding curbing price hike, especially of kitchen items like sugar, fresh milk, meat and vegetables.—PPI
