Price hike irks Pindiites

The price of everything ranging from food to transportation to house rent has soared distressingly. The rise has been constant. Despite a raise in the salaries of certain sectors, it has been harder for both fixed and non-fixed-income earners to make ends meet.

“The price of daily essentials bewilders me. The price of food and non-food items has shot up. I have made big compromises in the living standard of my family to endure the price hike of food and transport. Still, I am finding it more and tougher to pay for the food we used to have before,” says Nusrat Ali, a sales clerk working at a marketing company.

“To send my daughter and son to a school while having decent food on the table, I am thinking about taking up a part-time job, says Altaf Ali, a school teacher.

“I live in an area along the railway track in Loi Bher Railway Scheme with my four children and my wife, a domestic help, and dread that I might fail to pay the increased rent, following which my family may be evicted anytime,” says Safdar Hussain, a labourer.

“Being a middle-class family I have more than one wage-earning member. But our standard of living has not improved in any meaningful sense as the family earnings have been lagging far behind the growth rate of prices of daily essentials,” says Asif Hasan, an employee of a private company.

“Customers think that we profit enormously from the trade and keep bargaining. They fail to see that we are as vulnerable to wholesalers’ prices as they are. I swear by God that we make a nominal profit and have no control over the price of the products we sell,” says Sajjad Rizvi, who sells fruits and vegetables near the Airport Housing Society rail crossing.

“The present inflation cannot be explained with regular economic reasoning only. The government’s lack of control over the market is also responsible for it. The intermediaries are also greatly responsible for raising the price of everything. Various large interest groups also create an artificial food shortage through speculative trading “says Mohsin Abbas, an economics professor at a local university.

“While the government has little control over the price issues, it surely has the means to hold back the growing rate of food items. In addition, the government can take measures to enhance the wage growth rate. If it doesn’t take any of these steps, a tremendously large population will suffer,” says Karim Zaidi, who works in a government ministry.

Tehreem Fatima says, “In an abnormal market like ours the rising price of food commodities cannot be explained by demand and supply phenomenon alone. That lies only in the textbooks. There are man-made reasons as well like hoarders and black marketers.”