In their place, new Chief Minister’s Farmers’ Markets will be created. These markets will be staffed by government inspectors who will work under the direct supervision of the Assistant Commissioner.
At these markets, every vehicle, trailer and container carrying vegetables, fruit, pulses, sugar and grocery goods will be formally registered at the time of entry. The authorities intend to bring the new system into operation in the second half of December.
Under this decision, four fruit and vegetable markets and six wholesale markets in the Rawalpindi Division will be closed, while across Punjab a total of 42 fruit and vegetable markets and 70 wholesale commission markets will be removed.
The new Chief Minister’s Farmers’ Markets will remain under the full control of the government, with offices of the District Administration, the Price Control Magistrate and the District Price Committee established on site. All inflows of goods, including supply and auctioning, will take place entirely under government supervision, bringing an end to private control.
However, the President of the Vegetable Market Traders’ Association, Ghulam Qadir Mir, the Secretary of the Fruit Market, Sajid Khan, and the Vice President of the Wholesale Market Traders, Shafiq Khan, have rejected the proposal. They urged the government to avoid such experiments and instead give attention to proper governance, warning that these steps would lead to a rise in inflation.
They argued that if the government truly intends to introduce reforms it should establish parallel markets and allow them to compete with existing wholesale and fruit and vegetable markets, since improvement naturally follows competition.
They also noted that the government has not been able to operate the Utility Stores or the Sasti Roti scheme effectively and questioned how it would manage wholesale markets. They said the bureaucracy is trying to create direct confrontation between the government and the traders through such plans, a situation they pledged to resist.
