Mobile courts for arresting price hike, food adulteration

Weak governance and poor surveillance tend to fuel greed. And old habits die hard. This is the case with a section of unscrupulous businesses. Such traders and profiteers adulterate goods of daily use and raise prices of things at their sweet will to earn windfall profits. Most of them, being Muslims, are found to be fasting. They also claim to be practising abstinence, the basic Islamic teachings of the month of Ramadan.  The holy month of Ramadan puts a special emphasis on maintaining sanctity and austerity of fasting. It is thus absolutely unwholesome that such traders, wholesalers and retailers collude with each other to artificially raise the prices of essentials during this holy month.  Under such circumstances, most urban centres including the major cities are now witnessing a sharp rise in prices of about 30 types of commodities that are usually in great demand for preparing Iftar as well as Sehri items.
The media earlier reported that there is adequate supply of essentials in the kitchen as well as wholesale markets for this year's Ramadan. But grocers are now attributing price-hikes of such essentials to short supplies and to machinations by big traders, despite having good stocks with them. Even allegations about hoarding by a section of grocers and small traders have been made. The wholesalers are blaming the retailers who are throwing the ball to the wholesaler's court, again, in defence of their own positions. And in the process, the consumers are paying the price for this usual blame-game.
The government now needs to swing into action for proper monitoring of the markets and to send effective vigilance teams there. The mobile courts also need to continue giving deterrent punishment to the dishonest traders and food adulterators, whenever and wherever they are found guilty. They did this in the port city last Friday and in the capital city during the succeeding two days. Residents of all other cities as well as the relevant government authorities in such places should take the cue from such actions. These should not be considered to be meant for impressing upon the gullible about the government's intention. Rather these should clearly be purported to giving strong signals to the authorities concerned to be uncompromising whenever the interests of the wider public are put at stake.
On this count, Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) and the district authorities do need to jointly conduct mobile courts to check food adulteration. Such drives should be carried out in all major market places to ensure fair prices of food and drinks and curb adulteration. Furthermore, the representative business bodies or their associations should be involved in concerted actions with the government agencies at different levels in such moves as far as possible.
Besides, the trade promotion bodies or associations should themselves come forward on their own to form their own vigilance teams to monitor the markets. The chamber leaders should, in fact, not waste time by holding only talks with different market associations; rather, they should themselves be pro-active on ensuring that traders follow ethical practices to spread their profits thin rather than making a windfall. Thus, they should convince their follow businesses in all possible ways to help establish the true spirit of Ramadan. Being compassionate towards their fellow people in every sphere of life in these hard days should furthermore be considered part of businesses' social responsibility, from a wider context.