Price hike of essentials weighs on 90pc people
Around 90 % of individuals of Bangladesh are forced to get low-quality products when the costs increase as their incomes usually do not go up in keeping with the upward movement of basic items' prices, speakers said yesterday.
"As the prices of goods increase, the income will not go up, which puts strain on the family.
Due to this fact, mental and intellectual development is disrupted," said Rajekuzzaman Ratan, the general secretary of the Samajtantrik Sramik Front.
He said 90 per cent of the populace faced pressure when prices of essential items rose.
"They compromise with the grade of food and suffer from malnutrition. This impacts another generation."
He made the comments while presenting a keynote paper at a webinar on "Consumer rights when confronted with rising prices of goods and services" jointly organised by the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) and VoktaKantho, an online news portal of the CAB, yesterday.
Addressing the webinar, Prof M Shamsul Alam, energy adviser to the CAB, said it was becoming impossible to regulate the market because of the inconsistency of price increase.
He described the inconsistency in the income between government employees and marginalised producers.
"The market can be managed when income inequality is removed," he said.
MM Akash, a professor of the economics department at the University of Dhaka, said the interest of both consumers and producers needed to be protected.
He demanded a long term wage commission to revive consistency between selling price and wage.
The domestic market depends on the purchasing capacity of people, but their buying power had not been increasing, he said.
Ratan said aside from 23 per cent of the very rich, wealthy and upper-middle-class, the rest of the 77 per cent of the people were affected by the increasing cost of living.
He needed a balanced price-fixing to save lots of the marketplace from the curse of inflation by breaking the monopoly and syndicates.
In line with the labour leader, although there have been many types of jobs and professions, the wage board had been fixed by the labour ministry for only 43 sectors.
There exists a provision to revise the wage every five years, nonetheless it is not done since 2013, he said.
Ratan recommended strengthening the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation to create farm inputs quickly and cheaply, empowering the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh, and introducing a rationing system.
He also suggested monitoring the marketplace, taking steps to rationalise transport fares, making education affordable for all, and controlling the market of healthcare and medicines.
Malay Bhoumik, a professor of the management department of Rajshahi University, backed rolling out a rationing system.
Ghulam Rahman, president of the CAB, Jyotirmoy Barua, a lawyer at the Supreme Court, and Kazi Abdul Hannan, editor of VoktaKantho, also spoke.
