Each year, the arrival of Ramzan brings a familiar administrative challenge for the Government of Punjab. As millions of households increase their food consumption during the holy month, authorities must ensure that essential commodities—flour, sugar, vegetables, fruits, poultry and groceries—remain available and affordable. For decades, the provincial response has relied on Ramzan bazaars: temporary or regulated markets where citizens can purchase daily-use items at controlled prices.
Yet the difficulty has rarely been limited to setting up these markets. The real challenge lies in managing them effectively.
When dozens of bazaars operate simultaneously across the province, ensuring price compliance, maintaining supplies and responding to citizen complaints becomes a complex logistical exercise. In previous years, monitoring relied largely on physical inspections by district administrations. Complaints about shortages, overpricing or mismanagement would often emerge after problems had already occurred.
This Ramzan, the provincial government appears to be experimenting with a different approach.
During a recent meeting chaired by Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, officials briefed the chief minister on a new monitoring system designed to oversee Ramzan bazaars across Punjab in real time. The briefing was delivered by Director General Punjab Sahulat Bazaars Authority (PSBA), Naveed Rafaqat Ahmad, who explained that a Central Provincial Control Room has been established at the Authority’s headquarters.
According to officials, the control room is intended to function as a digital command centre for the province’s network of Ramzan bazaars.
The facility has been equipped with approximately eighty-five monitoring screens connected to more than 1,500 IP-based cameras installed across Sahulat Bazaars and Ramzan markets throughout Punjab. The camera feeds transmit live footage directly to the control room, where monitoring teams observe activity across multiple locations simultaneously.
Through this system, officials say they will be able to track conditions inside markets in real time.
Monitoring teams are expected to observe the quality and availability of vegetables, fruits and grocery items sold in the bazaars. Cameras positioned inside the markets will allow supervisors to check whether stalls are properly stocked, whether prices remain within the limits notified by district administrations and whether market facilities are functioning smoothly.
Another aspect of the system involves collecting feedback from consumers visiting these markets. Officials say the monitoring teams will compile observations about customer flow, market conditions and operational issues in order to maintain a central data record of bazaar performance during Ramzan.
The system will operate around the clock.
According to the briefing, the control room will remain active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout the Ramzan period. Monitoring will continue even during late evening and night hours, when markets close and security responsibilities shift to guards stationed at the facilities.
Officials say the night monitoring component is intended to ensure that security staff remain active and vigilant. Camera feeds will allow supervisors to check whether guards are properly performing their duties and whether stalls and stored goods are being safeguarded.
In addition to security oversight, the monitoring system will also track sanitation and cleanliness inside the markets.
Maintaining hygienic conditions has long been a recurring concern in large public markets. Through the camera network, supervisors will be able to observe whether waste disposal arrangements are functioning, whether walkways remain clean and whether vendors are maintaining acceptable standards of hygiene around food products.
Customer safety represents another area of focus. The monitoring teams will watch for overcrowding or disorder within market premises and coordinate with local administrations if intervention becomes necessary.
Officials say the system will also help verify complaints submitted by citizens.
Consumers visiting Ramzan bazaars often raise concerns about pricing or product quality. Under the monitoring framework, complaints can be cross-checked against live camera footage to determine whether the reported issue exists and whether local authorities need to intervene.
The objective, according to officials, is to reduce delays between a complaint being raised and corrective action being taken.
Behind this monitoring framework is the Punjab Sahulat Bazaars Authority, the institution responsible for organising and managing the Ramzan market network this year.
The Authority emerged from the earlier Punjab Model Bazaars Management Company, which previously managed a limited number of model markets in urban areas. With the establishment of PSBA as a statutory authority, the institutional mandate expanded to develop and regulate a wider network of markets across the province.
Over the past year, the Sahulat Bazaar system has grown significantly.
Fourteen new Sahulat Bazaars have recently been completed and made operational in different districts, while fifteen mobile markets—known as “Sahulat on the Go”—have been introduced in the Lahore Division. These mobile units are designed to bring organised market facilities to densely populated areas where permanent bazaars are not yet available.
During Ramzan, the system is expected to operate on a much larger scale.
Approximately seventy-five markets are functioning across Punjab this year. Forty-nine of these are permanent Sahulat Bazaars already operating in various districts. Fifteen are mobile “Sahulat on the Go” markets, while eleven are temporary Ramzan bazaars established in district headquarters where permanent facilities do not yet exist.
Together, these markets form a province-wide network where citizens can purchase daily-use commodities at prices generally kept below official District Commissioner rates.
For administrators, however, managing seventy-five markets simultaneously presents a demanding operational challenge.
Vegetables and fruits must arrive fresh each day through functioning supply chains. Poultry and grocery stocks must remain stable. Vendors must operate within regulated price limits while maintaining viable margins. Facilities must remain clean and secure, and crowds must be managed as thousands of citizens visit the markets daily before Iftar.
Within this environment, the central control room is expected to serve as the nerve centre of oversight.
From a single monitoring facility, officials aim to track the performance of bazaars located hundreds of kilometres apart—from Jamapur in southern Punjab to Attock in the north, and from Okara to Dera Ghazi Khan, Bhakkar and Pakpattan.
Whether such real-time monitoring can effectively manage markets spread across such a wide geographic area remains an open question.
For Director General Naveed Rafaqat Ahmad and the team overseeing the Sahulat Bazaars Authority, the coming weeks therefore represent a critical operational test.
The control room may offer administrators a powerful technological tool, but its effectiveness will ultimately depend on how quickly local authorities respond to issues that appear on the screens.
Observers note that the true measure of the system will emerge once Ramzan markets reach peak activity.
In the first days of Ramzan, visitor numbers often rise gradually. By the second week, however, the markets typically experience heavy evening crowds as families prepare for Iftar. Supply pressures increase, price disputes sometimes emerge and administrative oversight becomes more demanding.
Officials acknowledge that the first fifteen days of Ramzan will likely reveal whether the monitoring system functions as intended.
If the control room enables rapid identification and resolution of operational problems, it could change how large public market networks are managed in Punjab. Real-time surveillance, data collection and complaint verification could strengthen administrative responsiveness in ways that traditional inspection systems have struggled to achieve.
If the system proves difficult to manage, however, it may raise questions about whether technological oversight alone can resolve the longstanding logistical challenges associated with Ramzan bazaars.
For now, the experiment has begun.
Across Punjab, hundreds of stalls selling vegetables, poultry and groceries are opening each day for citizens seeking affordable food during the holy month. Behind the scenes, dozens of screens inside a control room in Lahore are displaying live images from markets spread across the province.
The success of the initiative will not depend merely on the technology installed inside that room.
It will depend on whether the activity visible on those screens reflects markets that remain orderly, well-supplied and fair for the millions of citizens who rely on them during Ramzan.
