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PRICES of essentials are still high although the Ramadan and the Eid are over. Actually commodity prices had been showing an upward trend for years together and this spiral reached its peak in the month of Ramadan.
Miseries of the people belonging to fixed-income group have further gone downhill over the past couple of days. Newspapers reported that prices of essential commodities have further jumped up to an unusual level in the last several days compared to the price-level before the Eid. The factors ascribed to this abnormal market situation is the disruption to normal functioning of the market due to unprecedented security measures for the SAARC summit. Market situation was found unnatural and varying in different places of the capital.
What was perhaps even more hurtful to the poor consumers was the slow but continuous rise in the prices of the different varieties of rice including the coarse varieties.
All these are because of poor governance. We do not see any surveillance. There is no isolation of the blacksheep among the traders, no probe into the cause of the irrational hikes; rather the tendency is to show total indifference.
Time and again, our ministers cite the rise in the oil-price in the international market as the reason. But oil price had risen only once; why prices should rise continuously. One doubts that the manipulators are active to trade on human misery. A weak administration having no accountability came in aid of these immoral people. Apart from unscrupulous traders, there are the extortionists and toll collectors who eventually penalise the consumers.
Zareen Rafa
Niketon, Gulshan, Dhaka
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