A team of the National Directorate of Consumer Rights Protection (NDCRP) in Comilla has fined a dealer of Open Market Sales (OMS) after discovering soybean oil bottles stashed under the bed and in the bathroom of his house.
During the raid, they found Faisalur Rahman, the owner of Messrs Saiful Enterprise, selling soybean oil of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) at unfairly high prices at his shop in Kaliajur area.
“We went to his house and recovered 112 litres of soybean oil from under his bed and bathroom along with 250 kilograms of lentils,” said Md Asadul Islam, an assistant director of the NDCRP.
He added that the grocery items had been seized and handed over to the magistrate for distribution among orphans.
The NDCRP fined Faisalur Rahman Tk40,000 for creating an artificial crisis.
The consumer rights authorities earlier conducted similar drives in Dhaka and Rajshahi among other places, where many shopkeepers were penalized and their shops sealed off for hoarding soybean oil and selling at higher prices, in the wake of global food price hike and for the Ramadan that starts in the first week of April.
On March 8, the NDCRP announced that no one would be allowed to sell cooking oil without a receipt from next Friday.
The decision came amid attempts by retailers to hike oil prices further by creating a smokescreen of a crisis.
Cooking oil traders called for the formation of a joint monitoring cell in order to ensure an adequate supply of cooking oil in the markets from the mills, while the NDCRP announced a policy of zero tolerance against irregularities in oil prices.
According to a writ filed with the High Court on March 6, traders have been siphoning soybean oil off sealed five-litre containers and selling the cooking oil in loose form in a bid to make quick money.
Moreover, some have been driving up retail prices by hoarding oil, as prices of the daily commodity have skyrocketed in the international market following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war.
While trading bodies maintain that the new prices will not hit the Bangladesh market until May or June, traders have already started creating an artificial crisis.
Cooking oils have been getting dearer with prices being hiked up. On March 2, a litre of loose soybean oil sold for Tk175, which is 22% more than the retail price set by the government.
Moreover, a five-litre container of the cooking oil, which originally retails for Tk795, sold for Tk830.
Our Comilla Correspondent Masud Alam contributed to this report.
