PESHAWAR, July 20: A variety of smuggled goods and substandard daily items available in abundance in the market have provided a breathing space to the cash-starved middle class of the NWFP.

Substantial increase in utility charges and prices of daily use items, including petroleum products and edibles, has severely hit the purchasing power of lower income groups especially the middle class.

A large number of them has to opt for part time job to make both ends meet, whereas instances of females — mainly in the urban parts — going on work to support their families are also on the rise in the somewhat conservative society of the province, according to interviews with members of different income generating groups.

Amidst rising standard and cost of living — specially in the urban centres — people belonging to low income groups seldom save something out of their earning, according to the interviews.

The availability of smuggled goods of fine quality has come as a respite for the not-so-well-off middle class, especially the lower middle class, making people with lower income able to buy air conditioners, refrigerators and other expensive items at reasonably low prices.

“Bara markets have significant impact on the lives of the low income groups making them able to buy products which otherwise would not have been possible for the financially constrained middle class,” said Raees, a shopkeeper at the Peshawar’s Karkhano market of the smuggled goods.

The fine quality foreign-made electric appliances have been a source of increasing electricity stealing.

A family with monthly earning of Rs10,000 to Rs15,000 can afford to make one-time investment in a smuggled air conditioner of the Malaysian make at a cost of Rs24,000 or even lower than that, but it cannot afford to pay electricity bill of over Rs5,000 a month if it uses the appliance for eight hours a day.

Those who cannot ‘afford’ electricity pilferage, switch over to room coolers.

Smuggled packed-edibles of the European, Iranian and Indian origins apart from a large variety of items of daily use including soaps, washing powder, etc., have also come as blessing for the low income groups, which are apparently going through pressing times due to increasing living cost.

Industrialists and traders feel that the sitting government — like its predecessors — has failed to deliver as far as poverty reduction is concerned. They also feel that Islamabad could not do any thing to boost the industrial sector.

Jamshed Sawal, a leading industrialist and sitting president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), said that the government, claiming to have foreign exchange reserves of $7bn, was in a position to to stabilize the shaky market. — Intikhab Amir