CONSUMERS Association of Bangladesh or CAB on Wednesday claimed that cost of living in the country has increased by 6.5 percent due to price hike of essentials like onion and rice last year. Of the commodities, onion price rose highest in September at Tk 250 per kg. Beside, the prices of rice, flour, egg, ginger, garlic, cardamom, coriander, vegetables, edible oil, clothes and also utility services were increased. People had to spend 6.08 percent more for buying the commodities. And the trend is still going on. Even after that government has taken initiatives to raise prices of gas and power, which will directly affect all sectors.
No doubt, government’s failure to control the onion price set a bad precedence which inspired other businesses to increase prices. The prices of local chicken increased by 22.50 percent per piece while the prices of beef and mutton by 2.70 percent. Other protein items including egg, fish, shrimp, powder milk and cow milk became dearer last year while prices of several life saving medicines were increased. What we see that prices of almost all essentials were hiked. That means there was no effective control of the government on the market. Whenever there was a meeting between commerce minister and traders, we saw that prices of essentials shot up next day. It’s a bright example — how the inexperienced and inefficient persons are given charge to run the ministries. There were widespread allegations that ruling party-backed hoarders’ syndicate were mainly responsible for creating abnormal situation in the market. In many cases, government’s directives were also not carried out properly. But no serious action was taken against them apart from fining a little amount of taka to some small traders.
The fact is that most of the common people’s earning was not increased last year though they had to spend 6.5 percent high. Government earlier had increased the salaries of government officials and employees keeping the majority common people out of the facilities. Now these ordinary people have to bear much extra burden. It’s a sign of weak governance.
