CM Mahmood Khan For Ensuring Food Commodities At Prescribed Rates

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan on Monday directed authorities concerned to take strict action against the hoarders and elements involved in artificial price-hikes to ensure availability of food items to people at officially prescribed rates

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Sep, 2021 ) :Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan on Monday directed authorities concerned to take strict action against the hoarders and elements involved in artificial price-hikes to ensure availability of food items to people at officially prescribed rates.

He expressed these views while chairing a meeting to review the latest situation of prices of various food items in the province as well as the gap between the wholesale and retail prices of food items in the market.

The meeting was attended by Provincial Food Minister Atif Khan and Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz besides concerned administrative secretaries and other officials.

The Chief Minister expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by the administrations to control the prices of food items and directed the concerned authorities to continue taking steps to further improve the situation.

He said that it was the priority of the KP government to provide maximum relief to the people by maintaining prices of food items at affordable level and directed for closely monitoring hoarding and profiteering tactics by unscrupulous business elements.

He said immediate and effective action should be taken on public complaints regarding overcharging and hoarding of food commodities.

During the briefing it was informed that prices of four food items had come down in the province during the last week while prices of nine food items remained stable.

Similarly the meeting was told that the flour supply and price situation in the province remained stable.

It was told that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa there was lowest price of sugar as compared to other provinces and a total of 2,145 units were checked from September 1 to September 23 to control sugar prices. During inspection fines of Rs 1,50,000 fine were imposed.

Similarly, the teams concerned also conducted surprise visits to markets to ensure prescribed rates of edible items and from September 1 to September 23, as many 2349 units were checked and during this period, 186 FIRs were registered for violating prescribed rate list. It was informed that 268 units were sealed during checking and 105 FIRs were registered over unavailability of official price lists and 195 shops were sealed in this regard.

The meeting was briefed during the current month, 403 complaints were registered on Pakistan Citizen Portal against overcharging and out of these 294 complaints were acted upon, adding other complaints were being processed according to timelines.

The officials concerned said that the rate of public satisfaction in terms of action on complaints was 62 percent.