PRICE manipulation through the creation of artificial shortages is all too common in Pakistan. Much to our detriment, we have grown used to unscrupulous millers and hoarders deliberately curtailing supplies of food items such as wheat flour and sugar in order to jack up prices at the retail level. Successive governments have failed to crack down hard on hoarders, often hiding behind the free-market, supply-and-demand argument when in actual fact there is nothing "free' about a system in which cartels, not genuine market forces, call the shots. The political clout of many wheat and sugar hoarders is no doubt a factor as well. But the exploitation doesn't end there. Consumer rights are trampled at will at every turn in this country due to capitalist greed, official indifference and our own failure or inability to speak out against injustices. Unempowered as they are, most consumers have no option but to suffer in silence. But even those who can make a difference rarely stand up for their rights.
Though we have become accustomed to being taken for a ride, there has to be a limit to rampant profiteering. That boundary has now been crossed with multinational pharmaceutical companies allegedly conspiring to create a countrywide shortage of medicines. Exorbitantly priced flour can produce tremendous misery but the absence of life-saving drugs can cause instant death. The list of "missing' medicines is long and most of the drugs that feature on it are described as essential medicines by WHO. Patients and their caregivers are running around in circles searching for medicines that cannot be found anywhere even in large cities ‚ and in some cases across the country. Doctors are being asked by patients to suggest alternative medicines, which may or may not be as efficacious as the drugs prescribed originally.
It is said that the multinational pharmaceutical firms have deliberately slowed down production in order to pressurise the government and extract maximum concessions in the run-up to the new drug-pricing formula, which is likely to be announced by the end of this month. With the government expected to allow a significant increase in prices, it follows that the companies in question stand to make a packet if they withhold supplies until the new rates take effect. Note that we are talking about essential medicines here, not consumer durables that people can do without for a month.
Irrespective of what "relief' is granted to the pharmaceutical multinationals later this month, they must be convinced to speed up production and release supplies forthwith.
Dawn
