Transport owners charging more than double the usual, an acute supply shortage of essentials and fear of escalating violence in the coming weeks have played havoc in the capital’s kitchen markets pushing prices almost through the middle-class’s roofs.
In the weeks prior to the one ending on Saturday, traders used to transport essentials to the capital city at night even during hartals.
But things have been different with the recent 71-hour countrywide road, waterway and railroad blockade programme enforced by the 18-party opposition combine.
With more than 500 trucks and covered vans vandalised and torched in the last three months in violent incidents, transport owners are not willing anymore to bring out their vehicles, especially on the highways which happen to be one of the cream spots for vandalism and arson.
Babul Mia, a wholesaler at Karwan Baazar, told the Dhaka tribune that he had to pay Tk35,000 for a truck, which, under normal circumstances, would have cost him only about Tk16,000.
“Bringing even one of the usual consignments to the market was a struggle because the truckers are unwilling to ply during blockades,” Babul said.
Lokman Hussain, general secretary of Karwan Bazaar Kitchen Market Wholesalers Association, said: “The ongoing countrywide political violence, including arsons and vandalisms, crippled the transportation system; hence the acute supply shortage of vegetables and the rocketing prices.”
Rustom Ali, president of Bangladesh Covered Van and Truck Owners’ Association, told the Dhaka Tribune that transport business had nosedived in the last few months because of hartals and blockade.
He also said: “We have been carrying essential commodities at night time during hartals; but this blockade has forced us to stop doing that as well.”
On an average, around 1,000 trucks, carrying rice and vegetables, come to Dhaka every day, said Nirod Baran Saha, president of Rice Dealers’ Association of Naogaon. But the number has come down to merely a hundred since violence escalated, he said.
Some traders and wholesalers of Karwan Bazar, the biggest kitchen market in the capital, told the Dhaka Tribune that they had been scared about what might happen in the coming weeks.
“If BNP calls more strikes, then we will have to pull down the shutter because of the raging supply shortage,” one of them said.