• Essential grocery items are not available in many Bachat bazaars, Dawn visit reveals
• Most shopkeepers claim they are pressured by local administration to set up stalls

KARACHI: The sherbet bottles were the first to come into view. Then the flies. Then the stall-keeper. The keeper looked grim, the flies happy as one heard the fruit seller cry out the price of melons, which looked like they were suffering from undernourishment. They were very small. Still, the flies didn’t seem to mind.

The Bachat bazaar in Korangi’s Bhittai Colony is located at a garbage dump, just behind the site for the regular weekly Sunday and Tuesday markets there. It is one of the 27 such facilities set up by the Sindh government in all seven districts of Karachi for Ramazan for offering grocery and household items at discounted rates.

Next to the sherbet bottles were packets of ice pop, a sweet syrupy liquid in various flavours that are supposed to be enjoyed frozen but out here it is all liquid. There are no deep freezers, or even an ice box or tub, around for that matter. Several spots for stalls inside the tent are vacant with empty tables.

“The people are not interested in selling stuff according to the government rates, so they left,” says Fahim Qadri, the man selling the sherbet and melted ice pops.

“The flour seller vanished, the chicken stall vanished like this,” he said, adding that the government was not charging them anything to set up the stalls and they were also being provided free electric connections.

“People come looking to buy meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, flour and sugar but there are not many stalls here selling these,” he further added.

Mohammad Waseem, selling cooking oil there, meanwhile, says that they are selling only Rs10 to Rs15 per litre cheaper than the market.

Mohammad Iqbal, selling lentils, rice, gram flour, etc, says the same thing. “We are selling at wholesale rates basically,” he says.

Mohammad Asad, selling spices, including dried red chillies and other assorted spices, says that he is selling three packets of spices, any spices, for Rs50. “In the market, you’ll get the same size packets for Rs25 each,” he points out.

Nasreen Ijaz, a customer, says that the Bachat bazaar helps the pocket when you buy in bulk. “Like my buying an entire carton of cooking oil instead of just one packet will give me a saving of Rs200 to Rs300,” she points out.

Another customer, Bilquis, was looking for a chicken shop. Not finding it, she left.

“Chickens are in shortage for the last two days,” the duty officer at the Bachat bazaar, Mohammad Atif, told Dawn.

When pointed out to him that there was also no flour at the bazaar, he said that they were getting 150 sacks of flour each day, which were sold out very soon. “Our need here is 500 sacks a day for which I have informed the folks at the helm,” he said.

Bachat bazaar at Clifton

The Bachat bazaar at Clifton’s Jehangir Kothari Parade was not supposed to be there.

According to the government, it was supposed to be located opposite the China Port, near Dua Chowrangi, where the people of nearby localities, especially residents of Shireen Jinnah Colony could have benefited from it.

But it decided to shift on its own to Jehangir Kothari Parade. It had all the big and well-known places such as Chase Up, Carrefour, Imtiaz, Nice Supermarket, etc, running stalls there in a very clean and quiet environment.

There was not a single fly there. But then there were also barely any customers there. The stall vendors were just sitting around killing time.

Only the vegetable seller looked content. “I brought little amounts of vegetables with me and I’ve sold almost everything,” Tanvir Ahmed, who said he sold vegetables in Delhi Colony, told Dawn.

He also said that he was happily minding his own business selling vegetables in Delhi Colony when he was approached by government officials who threatened him of paying Rs100,000 fine if he didn’t agree to set up a stall at the Bachat bazaar. “So here I am,” he smiled.

“I’m not as brave as the fruit-seller and the butcher, who have run away,” he said, pointing to a couple of empty stall spaces at the end of the tent. “Actually, I don’t blame the fruit-seller. No one was buying fruit from him and it rotted,” he shrugged.

“It’s like this,” said one of the two young men minding the Nice Supermarket stall, “We are selling even cheaper than company rates. It’s like selling at a loss but it is still better than the government challan we face if we don’t obey orders to set up a stall here,” he said.

The Bachat bazaar, which runs from 11am till Iftar, was wrapping up early due to lack of customers.

About the lack of fruit and vegetables at the bazaar, Abdul Hanan, assistant commissioner, Civil Lines, told Dawn that a lot of the fresh produce available at Bachat bazaars was one which had been confiscated from shops selling at rates higher than the government issued prices. “It runs out eventually,” he shrugged.

Bachat bazaar at Hyderi

Perhaps the biggest Bachat bazaar in Karachi is the one at the Kabootar Chowk at Hyderi Market.

It has everything, from children’s wear, ladies’ suits, undergarments, footwear, purses and bags, artificial jewellery, bangles and crockery to eatables such as flour, rice, lentils, sugar, oil, fruit, vegetables and whatnot.

Opening in the afternoon, around 2pm, it runs till 2am and it attracts lots of customers. But instead of providing the stall vendors with free space and free electricity, here they are being made to pay Rs350 per 2ft by 4ft table and Rs150 per bulb.

“I can’t arrange my merchandise on one little table. I need three at least,” said Mohammad Ashfaq of a children’s clothing stall, who after doing the math for three tables and three bulbs told me that he was paying Rs1,500 a day to the Sindh government, who had ordered him to sell his stuff cheaper than market rates.

“We are getting customers here from Orangi, New Karachi and North Nazimabad but still we are unable to make a profit while the Sindh government sucks our blood,” he said.

All the vendors at the Hyderi Bachat bazaar said that they used to have their carts up ahead on the service road but they were forced to move here to sell at the Bachat bazaar.

Bachat bazaar in Gulberg

The Bachat bazaar at Afghan Ground in Gulberg Town had a nice gate with Bachat bazaar banners and panaflex pasted on its pillars along with the Sindh government monogram, but once you got through those gates you were met with bare ground. No Bachat bazaar, in fact, nothing there.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2023