To contain neck-breaking price hike and to provide a visible relief to baffled masses against the atrocities of profiteers and hoarders, it is a must that all anti-price hike laws and rules be strictly implemented.
Citizens and consumers' protection bodies are of the opinion that there was no dearth of laws and rules against the price hike, but they lacked the basic ingredient of a willing bureaucracy for implementation of these laws.
Hamid Maker of Helpline Trust, a consumers' rights body, when contacted said there were many laws on paper against price hike, profiteering and hoarding, but they were toothless as administration lacked a strong will and continuity in its actions.
He said it was past experience that ambitious drives against the profiteer and hoarders had faced miscarriage to lack of their continuity. He said that people were now faded up with the farce of launching drives against profiteers and forgetting the whole matter after a few days.
He said that implementation was more important than lawmaking. Giving an example, he said according to law, sale of things like gutka, supari and polythene bags was banned in Sindh province, but these articles were being openly sold in the market, because administration seemed not interested in actual implementation of these laws.
To control price hike of daily-use commodities a Consumers' Rights Council was formed under the CPLC some nine months back, but it had yet to take any concrete action against the profiteer and hoarders mafia.
He said the Consumer Protection Ordinance 2003 was lapsed in Sindh due to lack of seriousness of concerned quarters, adding that there was a price control committee but it also seemed toothless against the powerful profiteers.
To a question regarding giving special magisterial powers to district government officials, including DCOs, EDOs Revenue, DDOs Revenue, mukhtiarkars and assistant mukhtiarkars in all districts, he said that just giving magisterial powers to some district officials would not make any visible difference, as these experiments had already been repeated in the past and failed due to lack of implementation.
He advised the administration to concentrate on continuity of its campaigns and strict implementation of its rules and laws, if it really wanted to provide a meaningful and visible relief to citizens.
Chairman, Consumers Association of Pakistan, Kaukab Iqbal, when contacted was also of the opinion that the basic issue was not of powers but a strong political will of their implementation.
Referring to the issue of prices of fresh milk in Karachi, he said milk-sellers had unilaterally raised the prices from Rs 28 per liter to Rs 32 per liter for the last six months, but the bureaucracy had yet to take any action against them.
Referring to the sugar scam, he said that despite all claims of administration, poor consumers were still forced to buy sugar on inflated rates. He said that people were being hoodwinked that relief was being provided to them through utility stores.
He said thousands of new utility stores were needed to ease the masses. Each union council of 18 towns of Karachi needed dozens of new utility stores to meet the needs of population. He said that the promised mobile utility stores still seemed nowhere.
Kaukab Iqbal said that recently the Punjab government had announced to open consumer courts in its 15 districts to mitigate sufferings of consumers and put some checks on mighty profiteer mafia. He said that the Sindh government should follow suite and set up consumer courts in the province.
He said it was a sorry state that in this 21st century a Pakistani consumer had yet to wait for hours in long queues before utility stores and gas stations for buying sugar for their kitchen and CNG for their vehicles.
He further said that lawyers of his association were mulling over to sue the government departments that had failed to implement the laws regarding curbing price hike, especially of kitchen items like sugar, fresh milk, meat and vegetables.