Wholesalers exempted from drive against overcharging

LAHORE
THE Punjab government has started a drive against the retailers for overcharging on edibles in which it has ordered Rs5,000 fine, six months imprisonment or both, while the wholesalers are not being nabbed who are the real culprits of not passing the relief of the lowered petroleum products prices to consumers.
In the ongoing drive, the government authorities are conducting raids and inspections of the retailers and small shopkeepers of residential areas and streets.
During the inspections, the government officials check the prices charged by the retailers from the buyers. However, the government officials are unable to check the quality of the edibles being sold by the shopkeepers and retailers at the government fixed rates.
The retailers of the different localities said they were unable to sell the quality edibles at the government rates as their purchase price was higher than the selling price fixed by the government.
Thus to avoid the imposition of fine and imprisonment they are selling substandard edibles to unknown consumers and quality items with profit to their regular consumers.
They said that since the regular consumers did not register their complaint against it as they knew that the prices of quality edibles were much higher than the official rates. Thus they did not compromise quality on price.
However, for unknown consumers, the lower quality items are being sold at the official rates, they said to avoid government action against them as the buyer could be a government official and checking the rates without showing his identity. The inspection and raids have made possible the availability of quality items in the markets. On the other hand, the government has not been taking action against the wholesalers who are selling quality items at higher rates so the retailers are also charging higher rates than the official rates from consumers.
Generally, the retailers and residential areas shopkeepers buy one to two weeks stock for their business due to limited resources and capacity to hold the stocks.
On the other side, the wholesalers keep stocks for longer time; some time they even stock items for a quarter. Thus they are actually profiteering or violating the official rates.
Similarly the government has not been taking action against shops and stores which are openly charging excessively for quality edibles. All the famous shop and carry stores, mega department malls and hyper markets have established a separate stall for DCO controlled prices edibles which quality is actually not consumable for humans. No one ever interested to buy that quality items as it seems that rotten, or leftovers of the quality edibles is displayed in that stall while for the quality items these all stores charge their own price which highly mismatch the official rates.
These mega stores also do buying in bulk and do for monthly or quarterly basis. Thus have also huge cushions in their margins between the buying and selling price. Instead of taking action against such stores the government focused on the small retailers and shopkeepers of the residential areas which will not be helpful in controlling the artificial inflation or passing on the relief of lowering petroleum product rates to the public.