THIS refers to the letter ‘Understanding the prime minister’ (June 18). The writer has asked fellow Pakistanis to use local goods and to say no to imported items.

I too want to join this movement, but I believe there are a few pre-requisites to be fulfilled by our prime minister before asking us to go local.

Firstly, stringent quality control mechanisms should be introduced because at the moment most local products (not all) are poor in quality to an extent where they can prove hazardous such as some chicken products which have ingredients that can have serious health consequences.

Similarly, the media and social media are full of horrific stories of some local food manufacturers using expired, low quality and unsafe raw material and harmful preservatives.

Quality control mechanisms will help in making edible items safe and consistent in standard because the quality nose dives as soon as the demand of the product increases.

Second, there have to be some kind of price regulations applied to the local manufacturers as usually prices are raised overnight mainly based on the whims of the manufacturer.

Consequently, some of the local brands have become exorbitantly priced, for example, some clothing brands.

The prime minister should pay attention to these issues before initiating local versus imported debate.

Amatuz Zahra Rizvi

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2019