KARACHI: The city administration, which had been claiming that it was effectively controlling prices of commodities during Ramazan, conceded — indirectly though — its failure when a top official on Thursday supported the ‘boycott’ of expensive fruits inspired by activists on social media.

“We support the three-day boycott of purchasing expensive fruits in the city beginning on Friday [today],” said Aijaz Khan, commissioner of Karachi, in a statement.

“I highly support this campaign,” said the commissioner, claiming that such boycotts would help the city administration in making its effort against profiteers more effective.

Such a claim by the city administration annuls its earlier claim in which it fined dozens of shopkeepers for overcharging and arrested some of them for selling commodities at more than the fixed price.

Hundreds of activists using social media sites, chiefly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp, have called for a three-day boycott of purchasing fruit, saying that vendors and shopkeepers were fleecing people through overpricing.

Such a campaign, claimed by activists as being spearheaded by no political or religious group, gained momentum to the effect that it attracted the city’s administration to support it.

“This announcement by the city commissioner shows no government, but the people themselves, should resolve such issues which had been resolved somehow effectively in the past,” said a rights activist.

Though no political party has yet supported the campaign, the commissioner’s statement is being taken as having a silent nod of the provincial government.

Early this week, officials in the Sindh government said, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had visited various parts of the city, met vendors and shopkeepers and expressed his anger over overpricing of eatables which the people were forced to purchase because of traditions associated with Ramazan.

“The chief minister had explicitly asked the city administration to control the spike in such prices in which the latter has not succeeded, which is evident from such support to this campaign driven by social media,” said an official in the Sindh government.

The commissioner, however, stated that the chief minister had directed them to garner support of civil society in the administration’s campaign to stop overpricing.

“I will ask the citizens to take an active part in the boycott called by civil society,” he said, adding that he and his subordinates would also boycott purchasing fruits for the coming three days. “We’ll break our fast [roza] without eating fruit in the coming three days.”

He said civil society had a right to resort to boycott. “It gives me pleasure that civil society has called for this boycott and I wish to see it succeed. It will certainly [teach] the profiteers a good lesson.”

He, however, admitted that despite all-out efforts made by the city administration, it did not satisfactorily discourage the profiteers.

The city administration, however, continued to claim that its ‘stern crackdown’ on the profiteers had challaned more than 500 individuals. They said the profiteers had been fined Rs4 million while 45 such people had been put behind bars.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2017