BADIN, Oct 3: The working of Weights and Measurements Department has gone down the drains because unlike its past practice of providing relief to people, it now encouraging the fleecing of people through the use of unauthentic weighing instruments.
The Bill of Sindh Standard Weights and Measurement Enforcement Act was passed in December 1975 and assented by the then governor Sindh on December 20, 1975. The main objective of the Weights and Measurements Act was to verify the correctness of commercial weights and measures and weighing and measuring instruments for area, capacity, energy, length or volume and other different class of trades, for which the government prepared many sets of standard weights and measures including special sets of bullion and other precious stones of working standard for people to get justified while purchasing their required items.
In this month of Ramazan, people are paying extra money for essential items along with braving miseries of sham instruments of weight.
The functioning of the Weights and Measurements Department was once effectively run under the Bureau of Supply and Prices but after winding-up of the bureau, it had been reduced to a cell under the Sindh Agriculture Department whose officials secured insufficient experience and relied on Weights and Measurements inspectors who with the connivance of traders were not properly checking and monitoring the instruments.
The process of verification and re-verification through which the government collects huge revenue in shape of fees, fines and renewals of licences, had been vanishing and the work on comparing, checking or testing, stamping the weight or measures or weighing and measuring instruments remained on papers as most inspectors allegedly issue verification and the stamping certificates without visiting the prescribed places. In many cases traders and mill owners, carry on their business without getting certificates.
This correspondent visited trade centres, shops and goldsmith centres at Badin and found that instruments of weights and measurements were not verified and marked and the use of unstamped and unauthentic found in practice. According to Muneer Bajwa, a former Field Official of the Weights and Measurements Department, the government was sustaining loss of more than Rs10 million because of the failure to control gross violations of law and anarchy by dishonest officials of Weights and Measurements Cell. He said influential traders were engaged in selling, manufacturing and repairing of weights without licence and had created cheating culture eroding this institution.
Cloth merchants were still using yard and meter, while gold and silver merchants too use their own weighing and measuring instruments but dealers, traders, millers and businessmen use defective weight bridges, platform machines, beam-scale and other measuring instruments knowingly, he said adding influential traders were not prepared to get their weights verified thus fleece people with the connivance of inspectors.
Bajwa said he detected a trader using a 22kg weight while purchasing paddy from farmers but while selling rice, he used the 20kg weight. However, reports of false weighing instruments in use by the different class of traders to the authorities fall on deaf ears.
He said he sent complaints to President, Prime Minister, Governor and Sindh Chief Minister, but surprisingly his own services got terminated.
A landlord, Sohail Memon, told this scribe that dishonesty, cheating, deceiving the innocent people by traders through fraudulent means of weight, measure and measuring instruments was unrestricted. He complained that sugar mills also were fleecing cane growers by deduction in weights.
Similarly, rice millers and purchasers were also cheating farmers through bogus dominations of weights and measures.
The survey conducted by this scribe revealed 60 per cent of traders having weights in possessions without stamped and unverified by the department and by such act every earner in the present atmosphere continue to be victim of Weights and Measurements Department.
