Despite commissioner’s directives: Fruits being sold at exorbitant rates in Karachi

KARACHI: Fruits and vegetables are being sold at exorbitant rates despite Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shallwani’s direction to show no leniency against the profiteers.

In view of vegetables and fruits being sold at rates much higher than those fixed by the Karachi commissioner's office, the commissioner has directed the magistrates to clamp down against profiteers. The magistrates have been deputed to control the prices of essential food items during Ramazan. According to a press statement issued by the commissioner office earlier this week, the magistrates took action against profiteers in different districts of the city under the supervision of their respective deputy commissioners (DCs). Shallwani has asked all DCs to ensure that essential items are available to the consumers at prices fixed by his office. He has also directed the DCs to take stern action against profiteers and hoarders and forbidden them from showing any leniency.

However, fruits continue to be sold at exorbitant rates in different areas of the city on Sunday. The shopkeepers and vendors are supposed to display the price list from the Commissioner Office at their shops. However, in most of the shops of the city, no official price list was available on Sunday and fruits were being sold two to three times more than their normal rates.

According to one of the fruit sellers in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Asfhaq Ahmed, they get expensive fruits from wholesale vegetable and fruit market at Super Highway and cannot sell it at cheap rates in the city. “If we have to sell it cheaper than we bought, then what’s the point of selling fruits?” he said.

In Gulistan-e-Jauhar, bananas were being sold at the rate of Rs130 to Rs150 a dozen, while the rates of apples and melons were more than Rs200 per kilogram. “At the time when people are losing their jobs and businesses are already crippled, how can one have such expensive fruits for Iftar,” said one of the buyers, Aslam Shah. When one of the fruit sellers at North Karachi was asked for the official price list, he responded that he could not get one.

Assistant Commissioner of the Garden area in District South, Asma Batool, took action against a few of the fruit vendors in the area and made sure that the price list of the Commissioner Office was implemented last Saturday. Her team raided the godown and checked their receipts which depicted that they had sold the fruits at exorbitant rates to the retailers. “We imposed Rs20,000 fines on them,” she said, adding that one of the wholesalers who ran away would be arrested.