KARACHI, March 31: Bachat bazaars have lost their utility and effectiveness, and people are now calling them ‘loot bazaars’ due to the profiteering and fleecing of consumers, speakers told a seminar on Thursday.

The seminar on ‘Effectiveness of Bachat Bazaars’ was organized by the Pakistan Press Foundation at its library.

The EDO Enterprises and Investment Promotion Department, city government, Syed Abid Ali Shah, said that when assumed office, it was a general feeling that bachat bazaars had completely lost their utility, and instead of providing relief to common man, they were serving the interests of big traders and their middlemen. He said it was being demanded that these bazaars should be closed for good.

He said the basic idea behind bachat bazaars was to end the role of middlemen, so that producers and growers could directly supply their goods to consumers at cheaper rates.

He said, practically, the basic idea of setting up bachat bazaars had failed to deliver, and traders, entrepreneurs and middlemen, having shops in regular markets, had managed to capture bachat bazaars as well to sell their goods at full market rates.

Riffat Ali Khan, the Chairman of the Bachat Bazaars Association, said these bazaars were a major source of jobs for educated people since some 20,000 families in Karachi were directly dependant on jobs related to them.

The President of Consumer Federation, Huma Bukhari, said bachat bazaars had been hijacked by profiteer and hoarder mafia and they were fleecing consumers.—PPI