Zubair Qureshi
The prices of eggs and other food items like vegetables, daal (pulses), meat, milk, bakery items have gone out of the reach of the people of Islamabad and they have appealed to the government to look into the matter.
On Sunday, the first Sunday of the New Year, eggs were being sold for Rs430/- per dozen which implies one egg costs you Rs35.80/-.
Egg is the basic food item especially for children and school/office going children and elderly persons but thanks to the negligence of the district government of Islamabad, there is no check on its soaring price which is increasing almost on a daily basis.
In Islamabad’s weekly bazaar, the prices for dozen eggs was only Rs2/- less i.e. Rs428 and the customers at Sunday Bazaar in H-9 found little relief. Onions for instance, another integral part of every meal, were available at R350/- for 5-kg. In the open market the price is Rs90 per 1-kg making it Rs450/-. Similarly, tomatoes were being sold for Rs160 though a few days ago the price was Rs130/.
One of the visitors to Itwar Bazaar Naeem said he was regretting why he burned fuel and travelled all the way from Sector G-13 to H-9 Itwar Bazaar as there is only a minor difference from the open market. What was painful to see was that the prices of eggs were completely out of reach of the common citizens and they were wondering whether to buy eggs at all or not.
Shahida (name changed) a widow is a teacher at one of Islamabad’s government schools and receives PKR 65,000/- monthly salary. With three children and an old mother to look after, she has found it difficult to buy even the daily items of food that too from the erstwhile ‘cheap’ Itwar Bazaar. Her gas bill was Rs19,000 and electricity’s Rs8,000. Last month the gas bill was Rs6000 and electricity tariff was Rs3500. We have one water heater and we rarely use a gas heater to warm our homes, she said, adding she was shocked to see a more than 200pc increase in SNGPL bill. Likewise the electricity tariff is increased.
This is not the story of Shahida alone, Jamshed, a clerk in the Federal Secretariat, NawabMasih an employee at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) are feeling the crushing burden of price hike. To add insult to the injury the government is also charging GST (internal and external) from all the food and bakery items as well as the gas and electricity bills.
What makes life challenging for them is the fact that there is no check and balance on this price hike. They regretted that the price control committees and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) have turned a blind eye to this uncalled for trend of price hike. The price mafia and the ICT administration, it seems, are hands in gloves with and the Deputy Commissioner is more interested in rescuing his post than giving some relief to the residents, they said. An official of the SNGPL when contacted about the sudden hike in gas tariff admitted the gas prices have increased by 200pc. It is not an individual case but a policy matter and the government has in principle increased the gas tariff to compensate for the budget deficit, he said.
