MUZAFFARGARH, Jan 7: With the loadshedding of natural gas and electricity, the latest thing which is hard to find in the market is coal here in Muzaffargarh.

Dawn saw many people queuing up outside the shop of coal on Monday morning. As soon as a truck laden with coal arrived here from Balochistan, within an hour, the coal was sold. In the city and its suburban areas, eight to 12 hours a day loadshedding is being observed.

At the outset of the winter season, the rate of coal was Rs20 per kg. Now, it is being sold at Rs50 per kg, and still it is not available at times.

Naseeb Khan Pathan, the truck driver, said that it was the season of record profit for him. Naseeb supplies coal from the NWFP and Balochistan. He said that the last year he sold four trucks in the full season but now he had sold eight trucks and still three months were left. He said that he expected as many as 10 truck would be sold in the coming months.

Muzammil Hussain, a buyer of coal, said he had bought coal for cooking and fire because the low pressure of gas had not been any help in the chilly winter.

The ongoing spell of loadshedding has also aggravated the crisis of flour which is now being sold at Rs400 per 20 kg.

Nadeem Shah, a shopkeeper of Muzaffargarh, said that he did not keep the flour at his shop. He said he had decided not to keep the flour because he was afraid of officials and monitoring teams as they only arrested small shopkeepers for overcharging.

Elahi Bukhsh, a daily wager, said he had bought the bag of 20 kg flour at Rs478 from an ‘ata chakki’. Because of high rate of flour, poor laborers and daily wagers are worried. They said the monitoring teams have failed to provide flour in the market.

Frequent power failure has revived the business of candles here. The prices of candles have shot up many times. As loadshedding has made it the most sought-after thing, according to one shopkeeper, low quality candles are also being sold. The candles selling like hot cakes are Chinese candles. According to the shopkeeper, Chinese candles do not melt quickly and its wax does not fall drop by drop.