NEWSPAPERS reported that a special committee under the auspices of Ministry of Commerce started work from Sunday to monitor the costs of essential consumer goods in order to check overpricing. It will sit every Sunday to compare consumer goods’ prices to their production or import costs. ‘The move aims at finding out the stages where prices of essentials are going up,’ said Commerce Secretary also announcing that initiatives have been taken to observe the World Consumer Rights Day. The announcement of monitoring prices of essential commodities may stir an instant attention among the general people as they have long been waiting to get a relief from overburdened costs of essentials. Most of the goods especially the daily household items are more expensive for them for the last several months. It’s true that most of the essential commodities are imported in the country and most of the time the prices of these imported items fluctuate. Now how the importers are fixing the prices of the items for local market sales will be monitored. No doubt it’s a good initiative.
It’s a common trend of our traders and businessmen to hike price of goods due to absence of strict market monitoring. The household items, including rice, fish, meat, chicken, edible oils, and vegetables are often sold at exceedingly high prices. Usually, the price hike hits the poor people seriously. Recently, the people have faced tremendous problems due to scarcity of onions. The situation became so abnormal that – it appeared to be almost impossible for the government to control the onion market despite taking several attempts, including import from different countries. The actions taken by consumer rights protection officers of the government were not satisfactory to relieve the consumers of overpricing. In particular, they were helpless before the business syndicates allegedly backed by ruling party men. We suggest the authorities concerned to take a plan for fixing prices of essential commodities. At the same time, tough action must be taken against those who will charge extra money for the fixed-price commodities.
To avoid further miseries, the commodity market must be taken under control of the government before Ramzan.
