Addressing the price hikes of essentials demanded

Abdul Khaleque Khandker

The prices of all kinds of edible oil and rice have increased abnormally in the market over the recent time making the poor and limited income people baffled and frustrated.

Now that the poor people feel like groaning when they are in the kitchen markets to buy their inevitable food materials.

During this time of Coronavirus, the income of common people has considerably shrunk. So, the abnormal hike in the prices of various essentials like rice and oil have made low and limited-income people helpless.

The prices of palm oil have risen by more than 15 taka per litre, while lose super palm is being sold at Tk 128 per kg in the retail market.

“I purchased lose super soybean oil at Tk. 90 a kg last month and today I bought the same oil at Tk 128 per kg”, said an aggrieved buyer living at Mohakhali area of the city.

The prices of bottled soybean oil have also surged going beyond the ability of common people who earn a meager income.

“Strict monitoring of the markets of essential and smooth supply of the commodities must be ensured by the concerned authority, and the interest of the working mass people must be looked into on priority basis”, opined some elderly people, who are conscious about regular markets.

Some people say, “The price of onion rose from 40 taka to 90 taka a few months ago on the pretext of dearth supply in the market. But only a few days ago, many vendors were seen ferrying those same onions asking the price of 50 taka per kg.”

When the vendors were asked out of curiously, “You were selling these very onions at Tk. 90 per kg. But how can you sell the same onions at 50 taka at a loss of 40 taka per kg? and why? Then did the wholesale traders make an unrest in the market”? But who knows the answer?

These statements of the commoners remind us that there always goes something wrong in our markets, which helps wholesalers make their purses fatter at the suffering of the common people of the country.

The soaring rice prices in the market over and again, have made mass people of the country dismayed.

It has now become a confusing question for the poor buyers that, is there really dearth of food stuff in the market?

This conundrum in the rice market knows no respite making the limited income group remorse and aggrieved.

“Rice is the staple food for our people so its price must be kept lower and within the reach of the poor buyers under any circumstances”, said Mr Abdul Hye though he is a well-to-do businessman.

Some rickshaw pullers said, “We are in utter consternation to feed our children with limited income in this precarious time when the Covid-19 is strangling our might and means”.

With a view to controlling the steep and abrupt up surge in the prices of oil, rice and other commodities and to subside the mass people’s  grave anxiety and consternation the prices of the essential markets must be kept under close observation by the competent authority so that this abrupt hikes dare not belittle the land sliding progress of the country achieved by the leadership of our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the moulder of modern Bangladesh.

Apart from high rice prices, the price of edible oil has abnormally increased keeping the mass population of the country at an utmost trouble and in the state of sorrow.