High price(s) of living

With the rupee getting devalued so drastically and a shrinking buying power, Pakistani people, especially women, are finding that they cannot stretch their fixed incomes, which makes them worried. You! takes a look...

Economic prosperity serves as a backbone for the overall progress of a nation. This is due to the fact that social problems are interlinked with economic problems. When a society is unable to overcome its day to day concerns, they are likely to fall apart in terms of their economic condition. When citizens of a country are free from worries of earning a livelihood to sustain their lives, they can focus on education, improvise healthcare and develop technologies that make life easy. In other words, they can improve their standard of living.

Pakistan’s economic conditions are bleak due to power crisis, lack of investment for the development of industrial zones, and backward out-dated technology. Moreover, the price of petrol and the household budget has a strong link. Every time there is a hike in petrol prices, homemakers have to deal with the pressure built on their household income. It leads to people struggling to maintain a balance between incomes and expenses; because while there is a hike in the rates, there is none in their salaries. Then there is the uphill decision to make, which is whether an item is a necessity and what strikes off as a luxury.

In order to combat this situation, people, especially women, use different combinations to keep afloat during inflation. High prices force them to give up on necessities such as nutritious food items - an assortment of fruits and vegetables, dairy products etc - hence leading them to other problems related to health and education. The increased petrol prices literally bring chaos as people try to make ends meet. Almost everyone will have a tale of woe to tell regarding their finances based on the increasing prices, especially petrol rates, and the weak buying power of their money. For instance, the constant devaluation of our currency due to the rise in dollar exchange rate.

Such is the case of Rehana, who is finding it hard to keep its expenditures within budget. “People don’t understand that houses are affected by the increase in petrol prices. Everything becomes expensive whenever the petrol rates increase. Whether you shop at a local market off carts; in shops or in malls - a rise in petrol prices changes the dynamics of the whole financial setup for the society. Food items, medicine - everything we need to survive suddenly becomes expensive,” shares Rehana.

“We can do without luxury but we can’t do without food and medicines, and what about utility bills?” she pinpoints. “Education is also a big consumer of the amount we earn. If we ask the shopkeepers to give us discounts, they say that the rise in petrol prices affects the cost of transportation, thus the price of everyday items,” she adds.

It is not uncommon for governments to revise fuel prices but whatever decrease they propose is quite nominal and hardly enough to make a difference; allowing the shopkeepers to continue to extort the public by keeping the prices high. It doesn’t really matter to them that the government has reduced prices; they don’t go for it, disregarding the government’s orders. Now, the government has recently announced a price cut in petroleum rates for the month of January 2019. This may be a good way to begin the New Year but as far as the majority goes, this cut will be insignificant.

Zarmeena and her husband Sarfaraz have been married for five years but don’t have any children. They decided early on in their marriage that they would get stable financially before starting their family. However, they soon found out that plans don’t always fall into place so easily. “We don’t have our own house and the rent is too much in a city like Islamabad. We are deciding to move to a smaller city but our jobs are good and we don’t want to start all over again. If we move to another city right now, all we have done so far will go to waste and we will have to restart our lives. And I don’t think I want to redo whatever I have done,” explains Sarfaraz.

On affording children’s education, he tells, “Raising children and sending them to good schools is a very difficult process and extremely expensive. If both of us have been working to give a better life to our children, we can’t stop now and restart the whole cycle to lose all we have done till now. But living in the capital is draining our savings, everything is so expensive here. Cities like Karachi are still able to sustain the low-income groups, but there it is hard to survive. We will have to wait to start a family.”

Zarmeena agrees with her husband and says she wants her child to have the best in life especially when it comes to education. “I voted for this new government and I know it is working hard to improve the country. But, I know this is a long and tedious process to undo things of the past seven decades and will take time. We are and will be facing many issues like hike in prices of everything, especially consumer goods; but that also means we have to put many of our plans on hold,” expresses Zarmeena.

Zarmeena and Sarfaraz may be optimists and this maybe because they are young and have a whole life ahead. But the majority are not so fortunate. Increased prices is leading to more and more people cutting down on things that once used to be daily consumption items like fruits and meats. “Even a thousand rupee note has no value now,” laments Adeel, who is a salaried person and works more than eight hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. “Apart from the basics like food and utility bills, I have two children in school - and we all know how much education costs. Sometimes, I think we should homeschool the children because it seems we will be unable to afford the school fees,” he adds.

Adeel uses his motorbike to travel from home located at a distance from his office. He could take the public transport but rickshaws and taxis are expensive and buses are too crowded and almost never on time. He cuts down on his own expenses to give more to his wife to spend, as he knows she has to pay bills and make sure they have meals to eat.

With the rupee getting devalued so drastically and a shrinking buying power, Pakistani people are finding that they cannot stretch their fixed incomes, which makes them worried. While households with more than one breadwinner are struggling to make ends meet, it is harder for those who just have to manage both. Case in point of one-income household is of Alia, a single parent and the sole breadwinner. She has one child but her income is not enough to cover the expenses. On top of that, her income is vulnerable to inflation and she sees that what used to be a good income, now it dwindles and sways under the pressure. “As a single parent, it is not easy to run a house, especially if you are a woman. I work extremely hard to earn like any other person. Even though there are many other women who also face a lot of issues, I feel that our woes are amplified when we are being overlooked for promotions and increments,” complains Alia. “My salary is not enough to cope up with the fast rising prices of all commodities especially the necessities of life like food, medicine, education and bills. With a growing child to support, these expenses are hard to meet in normal circumstances but with a weak currency and increasing prices, things only get tougher,” she adds.

The new government made many good promises to people that would improve their lives and take the country to the next level during its election campaign. And the good news is that many experts claim that in the long-run things will improve. However, the real problem right now is that how will people sustain the financial power and cope with the ever increasing expenditures?

It is high time that the new government actually made strides to improve the lives of the people. But making sound promises that may look good on paper is fruitless unless one ‘act’ immediately provides what was promised to them. As fixing the petrol rate depends on international conditions and may be a bigger pie than we realise, the public just needs the new rule to give some priority to the problems faced by the common people. It would definitely help the general public if the authorities could them find an easy, cost-effective and efficient solution.