Packaging essentials has become another way of fleecing the consumers for business people. According to a report published yesterday, traders are making a higher profit by selling sugar and lentils in packages, higher than their prices in loose or unpackaged forms. This has been revealed recently in a report of Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission (BTTC) which says this practice of charging higher price is a breach of rules of essential commodity distribution.
According to the Commission, a kilogramme of sugar is being sold in the market at as high as Tk 95, and for lentils, it is even much higher. A kilogramme of it in package form is Tk 190. These prices are much higher, especially in the case of lentils. The BTTC showed that businesses charge nearly 6 per cent higher for packaged sugar and 41 per cent higher for packaged lentils. Businesspeople in Bangladesh waste no opportunity to earn money even though it is unethical and in many cases illegal also.
Take, for example, the recent shoot-up of the price of eggs, a rather cheaper source of complete protein for all classes of people. On the pretext of the government’s mindless hike in fuel prices, the consumers have witnessed skyrocketing prices of all essential commodities. The price of a dozen eggs, which used to be sold at an already increased Tk 120, jumped to Tk 160 overnight. As soon as the government announced that eggs would be imported from neighbouring countries, the price swiftly came down to Tk 120 per dozen eggs.
Reports said that syndicates of eggs and chickens looted Tk 520 crore just by manipulating the market on the pretext of fuel price hike. At that time, some egg traders were also fined for the wrongdoing. It is not just of eggs and chickens; prices of all essential commodities have seen an unusual hike due to hiked fuel prices. Where the price of a commodity, say a kilogramme of rice for example, should have risen by Tk one only, it has seen a rise of Tk 5 to 7.
Social psychologists might point out many reasons for this unethical practice in businesspeople, but the most important reason must be that the country’s politicians — who have little regard for morality and the rule of law but are at the vanguard of society — they are failing to set examples of morality and uprightness of character for others to follow. Far from it, their corrupting influence has put out lights everywhere.
