Call for restoring Consumer Rights Council

The mechanism of determining official prices of commodities has become inactive due to a lack of interest from the Karachi Commissioner. Consumers, who are reeling from back-breaking inflation, have demanded of Sindh Governor Kamran Tesuri to restore the CPLC-style Consumer Rights Council under his patronage.

The Commissioner has allegedly given a freehand to profiteers. Release of the official price-list of grocery items, fruits and vegetables, poultry, meat has been stopped for more than two months, giving wholesalers a free-hand to arbitrarily increase prices.

Three-year-old prices of grocery items were released in the month of Ramadan, while the prices have doubled during the last four months and no official price mechanism for grocery items could be maintained.

Junaid Ahmed Khan, a representative of the now-dissolved Consumer Rights Council, said that the Council was disbanded two years ago, after which the mechanism for determination of prices of consumer goods and issuance of an official rate-list has been suspended, pushing consumers into the quagmire of inflation.

The Consumer Rights Council played a pivotal role in the establishment of consumer courts and assisted the city administration in issuing official price lists and fixing prices.

Khan said the Consumer Rights Council also liaised between consumers, manufacturers and traders and provided relief to consumers by solving their complaints. It is high time this mechanism was restored.

Citizens have appealed to the Sindh Governor to immediately restore the Consumer Rights Council, so that inflation-hit people can be provided some relief and profiteers could be taken to task.

Milk, yogurt prices rise

The city administration has failed to protect consumer rights by giving in to the powerful "dairy mafia" which has arbitrarily increased milk price by Rs.80 per liter.

The administration raided shops of milk-sellers and imposed fines on them instead of taking action against the wholesalers and dairy farmers who have been pocketing Rs.400 million everyday by brazenly flouting the official rate list.

To further add insult to injury, the administration has buckled under pressure from the dairy mafia and called a consultative meeting on Monday to give an official approval to the arbitrary increase in the milk price, according to sources.

Dairy experts say that milk consumption goes down by 50% in the winter season, while its production goes up by 20% due to lack of heat. The demand-supply gap improves as people prefer to consume halwa and soup instead of desserts made from milk, such as kulfi, faluda, kheer, firni, and lassi, the experts explained. "Keeping in view the situation, the arbitrary increase in milk price is totally unjustified," they added.

According to sources, Monday's meeting is likely to approve the arbitrarily announced price increase and the milk-sellers would continue to sell milk Rs200 per liter.

Dairy farmers and wholesalers have done their homework before the meeting where they would push for Rs.260 to Rs.280 per liter price to put pressure on the administration to approve the current illegal and arbitrary price of Rs.200 per liter, sources told The Express Tribune.

It has been more than a week now that fresh milk is being sold in the city for Rs.200 in blatant violation of the official rate-list. Consumers say that the city administration conducted purported operations and sealed a few shops only to let them reopen within 24 hours.

The administration did not take any action against the powerful dairy mafia, including dairy farmers and wholesalers, and instead penalized retailers. Sources said that the wholesalers' association paid the fines imposed on milk-sellers.

Retailers say that the increase in milk price has badly affected their sales. Small shopkeepers' sales have gone down by 20 to 25 percent, while the sales of large shops have slumped by up to 30 percent. The surplus milk is being sold to large stores that buy a fixed quantity of milk through annual contracts.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2022.