Daily Times

With the start of the holy month, it seems the traders in Pakistan have forgotten all about the basic goodness and piety of these 30 days and have upped the ante in the hoarding and profiteering business. The prices of necessary food items and rations have increased by a whopping 20 to 30 percent, leaving the masses angry and with less on their plates this Ramzan. While the price increase is more than usual this year, this is a staple pattern, repeated every time Ramzan comes round. The establishment of Ramzan bazaars has not been of much help either with traders and sellers refusing to stick to government advertised prices, which seem to be nothing more than publicity stunts aimed at pacifying the public. The reason for this wanton chaos is the fact that no system of checks and balances exists to oversee the government’s directives on rates of essential items. There used to be such a system — it was called the Executive Magistracy (EM) and it was in charge of markets and crowd control, to list just two. The Police Order 2002 abolished the institution of the EM, effectively leaving a void where monitoring and accountability used to be. Between being at the mercy of the free markets and allowing traders to run free, how can the government hope to have any control over the abhorrent increases in essential items, especially during the month of Ramzan? The only people who suffer are the common masses who have no choice but to buy their rations at these increased rates — if they can still afford to.

To add to the people’s misery, all promises made on decreasing load shedding during Ramzan, especially during sehri and iftar times, have crashed to the ground. Urban and rural localities suffer prolonged power outages despite the heat and the fact that people are fasting. Why does this government make lofty promises it just cannot keep? From its election campaign where it promised to end load shedding within a matter of days to the days just before Ramzan when it promised to alleviate the nation’s energy woes, this government has failed to deliver on this front. Circular debt has reached a staggering level again and the reason for this is that the biggest defaulter is the government itself, with various government institutions refusing to cough up the money to pay their electricity bills. It is a vicious cycle that the masses continue to labour under, with no end in sight. Even the holy month will see no decrease in this tale of continuing misery. *