Daily Times

LAHORE: District Coordination Officer (DCO) Lahore captain (r) Muhammad Usman on Tuesday visited various Ramazan bazaars and checked the quality of food and their prices. He showed satisfaction regarding the arrangements in Ramazan bazaars and inquired about the problems faced by costumers on the occasion. He also visited the stalls that were set up at Walton, Model Town Link Road and Ghalib Market. He said that negligence on the quality of vegetables, fruits and other commodities would not be tolerated. He also checked the security and cleanness arrangements in the bazaars.

Usman visited the Badami Bagh Vegetable Market along with the SSP Operations and also checked the rate lists to ensure the sale of food on notified prices set by the government and district administration. In order to ensure transparent auction process, tomato’s auction was held under the supervision of DCO. Separately, the price control magistrates (PCMs) held a crackdown against shopkeepers to clean the city from price hikers, hoarders and profiteers. PCMs punished dozens of shopkeepers and arrested 218 people of which 92 people were put behind bars over several violations of the law. During the raid, PCMs inspected shops in open and critical markets of the city in their respective areas, checking 1,725 shops and imposing fine of Rs 99,300 on 88 shopkeepers. The DCO said as many as 108 PCMs were fully alert to eliminate overcharging on essential commonalities from open markets and whenever any complaint regarding overcharging was reported, the shopkeeper would be directly sent to jail.