NOT a single day passes without Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz announcing and launching programmes for welfare of the masses and promoting good governance in the province. After a series of such measures, she has now declared the intention of her government to establish a multi-tiered enforcement authority to check price-hike which has become number one concern for the people.
We have been emphasizing in these columns, time and again, that sufferings of the people on account of price-hike can be mitigated to a great extent if the administrative machinery is activated to prevent exploitation of the people by greedy elements. To quote an example of this exploitation, transport fares and prices of all goods and services are jacked up disproportionately in case of an increase in the prices of POL products but relief is not provided when prices of POL products revert back. Similarly, artificial price-hike is created due to hoarding and black-marketing in the absence of effective monitoring and vigilance mechanisms. In this backdrop, the decision to establish enforcement authorities at tehsil, district and provincial levels is a step in the right direction. Now Assistant Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners will have clear responsibility to check price-hike and take action against encroachments and land grabbing. The plan seems to have been carved out minutely as a special force and a police station would be set up at tehsil level to deal exclusively with the problem of price-hike, which will have the powers to register cases, investigate them and to make arrests in addition to the enforcement of law. It would be in the fitness of things if fixation and faithful implementation of transport fares is also made part of the responsibilities of these enforcement authorities as regional transport authorities and the provincial transport department have become part of the problem.
