SWABI: Local people have demanded establishment of sasta bazaars in the district during the holy month of Ramazan.

Talking to Dawn here on Monday they said that in big cities relief was provided to consumers by establishing sasta or bachat bazaars in Ramazan, enabling the poverty-stricken people to purchase eatables at low prices. However, Swabi is deprived of such a facility for unknown reasons, they added.

“Political parties have no interest in provision of such facilities to the local people,” Raj Wali Khan, an NGO worker, said. He said every government claimed just before start of Ramazan that prices of commodities, particularly of kitchen items, would be brought down, but there was no such relief for common people.

“Even utility stores have failed to come up to the expectations of consumers in providing food items at subsidised rates,” he regretted.

The consumers asked the government to take concrete steps to prevent artificial price hike in the fasting month.

They said Ramazan was a sacred month and prices of essential commodities were reduced in other Muslim countries, but in Pakistan prices were increased without any check.

“Prices of all the eatables have been increased manifold in Swabi markets,” PML-N district president Iftikhar Ahmad Khan told Dawn.

Masood Jabar, QWP district president, said: “Traders adopt different tactics to fleece consumers and dodge the price checking authorities. However, leaders of Anjuman-i-Kashthkaran said that shopkeepers were forced to increase prices as they got the commodities at high prices.

Said Arab Khan of Maneri Bala said that though price control officials did arrest the erring shopkeepers, they let them go free after a few hours, which didn’t help keep a check on prices of commodities.

He said that there was need for a mechanism to prevent the prices of food items from increasing in Ramazan.

The consumers demanded that magistrates and food inspectors should regularly visit the markets regularly and punish those who violated the government fixed prices.

When contacted an official of the district administration told Dawn that a proper mechanism had been devised to keep prices in check in the district headquarters and the four tehsils during the fasting month.

He said profiteers would never be allowed to violate the officially fixed rates.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2015

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