KARACHI, Sept 11: As the city government plans to set up 18 wholesale price outlets of fruits and vegetables besides 25 mobile units to ensure provision of these commodities during Ramazan, while consumers have already started paying higher prices for onion, spinach and tomato.

Retailers are now charging Rs24 per kg for good quality onion as compared to Rs18 on September 1 and Rs12 per kg on August 1. However, push cart owners in various localities are selling onion at Rs25-30 per kg. Consumers are also seen complaining about its poor quality.

Similarly, spinach price has soared to Rs20 per kg from Rs10-15 in the first week of this month, while retailers are demanding Rs24-25 per kg for tomatoes as compared to Rs15 per kg earlier this month.

However, the price of potato has been unchanged at Rs14-15 per kg due to improved supply from the Punjab’s cold storages and arrival of new crop.

A retailer said that the wholesale price of onion was rising because of short supply.

The city government has ambitious plans to provide fruits and vegetables to the consumers at wholesale rates. Besides, already established its 32 Bachat Bazaars will also ensure supply of eatable items at reasonable rates.

The decision for providing vegetables and fruits at wholesale rates was taken in a meeting chaired by DCO Jawed Hanif Khan last week.

This is a good move but majority of consumers will not be able to avail this facility owing to very low number of outlets and mobile units in view of over 16 million population of the city. The real test for the city government is to control fruits prices in the open market in the holy month.

A city government official told Dawn that the 36 officials of the CDGK — 18 DDOs of Revenue and 18 Mukhtarkar — would carry out price-checking drive in Ramazan as these officials had already been given special judicial magisterial powers for conducting summary trials and imposing fines on the profiteers.

CDGK Additional Executive District Officer Revenue and Incharge Price Control Matanat Ali Khan told Dawn on Tuesday that efforts to check prices had been expedited and during the last 15 days some 22 persons had been sent to jails and Rs2.5 million had been recovered from 1,100 traders for overcharging.

He added that this year chicken prices were also being fixed while fresh milk’s wholesale and retail prices had been fixed at Rs30 and Rs32 per litre respectively.

However, fresh milk is being sold openly at Rs34 per litre.