THE Federal Cabinet, in its meeting on Wednesday with Prime Minister Imran Khan in the chair, took several decisions to improve governance, tackle the menace of price-hike and safeguard interests of gas and power consumers. These include review of role and responsibility of the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) and direction to the Commission to take concrete steps for ensuring food security in the country and bringing to book the hoarders and profiteering cartels, instructions to the Power Division to take steps for redressing consumers’ reservations about tampering of meters by DISCOs employees which results in additional burden on consumers and imposition of curbs on media coverage of absconders and convicts.
The continued focus of the cabinet and the Prime Minister on the issue of unbridled prices augurs well as this might, someday, result into some kind of relief to the masses as rising inflation has upset household budgets. One would welcome the decision to reform the functioning of the CCP and empowering it further as this would give the Commission necessary powers to deal with cartels and hoarders and profiteers in an effective manner. The CCP is an independent agency of the Government of Pakistan with powers to enforce economic competition laws in the country and promote market and fair trade. On several occasions, the Commission came out with excellent and comprehensive findings covering all aspects of an issue or problem but it is quite obvious that it has no paraphernalia to enforce its recommendations. It is for the Government – federal as well as provincials – to take actions as suggested by the Commission but it has been observed that the successive governments did not attach much importance to its role, working and findings. Therefore, it would be unfair to blame the CCP for the current mess in pricing or its inability to deal with mafias of different sorts that have access to corridors of powers and also has effective representation in the elected houses.
Citizens do not have access to relevant records but why the Government is not approaching the CCP when sugar, flour and edible oil mafia fleeces consumers? It is also the responsibility of the Government to ensure food security and shifting of the blame in this regard on CCP is unjustified. We have all along been emphasizing in these columns that inflation cannot be curbed with just administrative measures, which are also lacking, as most of the price-hike has been driven by policies of the Government. There is need to review these policies and take measures to provide relief to the consumers. Tempering of meters by WAPDA employees and wrong reading/inflation billing has become a routine and despite tall claims by the authorities concerned no worthwhile measures are in place to check this practice. Exemplary punishment should be awarded to all those involved in such dirty tactics to mint money by way of pressurizing the poor consumer.
The cabinet decision to frame a law to prevent media coverage of convicts and absconders is ill-conceived as it has clear political connotations. No one would oppose that there should be no glorification of criminals and terrorists on media but political leaders should not be treated at par with hardcore criminals. There is absolutely no justification for placing curbs on projection of statements or activities of political leaders even if they are convicts as in many cases the convictions themselves are controversial. The justification being offered that those convicts and absconders who looted public money are glorified in the media as they frequently come on TV and claim to be innocent and criticize the government and its policies is devoid of rationality and it clearly shows the Government wants to deprive the opposition of its right to criticize policies and programmes of the Government. Instead of placing such curbs that would convey negative impression about Government’s media policy, the authorities should, instead, improve governance. Otherwise too, the Government would not be able to achieve much from such a legal ban except to earn more criticism as no one can regulate social media and the leaders would still have the option to reach out to the masses through foreign media and mass contacts. Such a move would also take the prevailing tension between the Government and the Opposition to new heights, which would not be in the interest of the country.
