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| CAPD loses its uniform, Legal metrology its accountability | | Vegetable prices continue to blow through skies | | Abodh Sharma
Jammu, Aug 25: Some five years since department of Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution System (CAPD) officially turned khaki, its sleuths seem to have lost their uniforms into oblivion; and with them, their responsibility and accountability towards their duty.
Then Minister for CAPD Taj Mohiudddin in a bid to give clout and influence to the officers of CAPD, adorned them with uniforms that would help them in their responsibility of market intervention to keep an effective check in hoarding, black-marketing and over charging. However, few years down the line, while black marketers and hoarders are ruling the roost, once decorated sleuths of CAPD have lost both uniform, as well as accountability.
Domestic budgets across Jammu have been smashed into smithereens as retail rates of fruits and vegetables have been rocketing through the sky primarily because of unchecked profiteering and overcharging by the commission agents and retailers and department of CAPD has miserably failed to respond to the situation. Besides department of consumer affairs, department of legal metrology which also has been entrusted with similar responsibility, has also failed to live up to expectations of the people.
"There is huge difference between the wholesale prices of vegetables and fruits published by the marketing wing of department of horticulture and prices at which they are being sold in the retail markets and there is no check on this unchecked profiteering" said Dinesh Sadhotra, a consumer right activist. "Hoarding of onions is also going on unabated due to unprecedented rise in their prices" he added accusing both CAPD and legal metrology departments of criminal action.
Sources disclosed that in a meeting of the consumer right bodies and the officers of the departments held in the presence of former minister for CAPD, it was decided to allow retailers a profit margin of 40 percent on their sales. "Even though the consumer activists emphasized that profit margins should be limited to 30 percent, they were agreed to be raised to 40 percent on the intervention of the minister, but now that the profiteering to the tune of over 300 percent is on especially in vegetables, there is no intervention from the government or the administration" added Rajesh Bakshi, another consumer right activist.
Senior officers of both the CAPD and Legal Metrology Departments hint at inertness on part of the government. "While government wants that the farmers should get good purchase for their produce, we have pressing constraint of man power to supervise and check complaints of hoarding, over charging and profiteering" a senior officer of the department of legal metrology confessed pleading anonymity. |
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