The government, it seems, is taking a host of measures, with the holy month of Ramadan about three weeks away. The month fasting calls for austerity, restraint, discipline and even certain hardships by people. Therefore, the citizens expect that no extra hardship should be created by way of raising the prices of essentials or more frequent disruption of utilities like power or water supply.
The government should, therefore, go for a constant and close monitoring of the markets and ask the traders to keep prices at reasonable levels during Ramadan. The citizens would very much expect the government, to set a precedent during the Ramadan by frustrating any unreasonable market behaviour. Given pressure, the traders would get no opportunity to go for unjustifiable price hikes.
Fair price shops, to be run by the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) and open market sale of rice from stocks, at reduced price, on the government's cards, would undoubtedly be sound moves to protect the common people against profiteers. But the lessons of recent experience in running such operations need to be taken into account to have a streamlined and efficient market intervention to protect the non affluent consumers by avoiding the embarrassment of the not too distant past.
Samiul Haque
Shantinagar, Dhaka.
Preparations for Ramadan
FE Team | Published: August 10, 2009 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
Share if you like