The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection carried out special raids at two wholesale hilsa depots in Dhaka at dawn on Wednesday, fining five traders Tk 42,000.

Two special teams raided Karwan Bazar and Jatrabari early in the morning. Finding evidence of inflated prices, Abdul Jabbar Mondal, assistant director of the directorate's Dhaka district office, fined the traders.

Jabbar Mondal said there was doubt over whether the prices at which the depot owners were selling hilsa were reasonable. Proper sales receipts were not being given either, allowing retailers to raise prices too. He told traders to sell hilsa at a reasonable profit.

He said the government had decided to export hilsa to India, and as soon as the news came out, fish traders unreasonably raised prices by Tk 200 to 300 a kg. "This must be stopped. Retailers are buying hilsa at Tk 1,550 and selling at Tk 2,200, almost Tk 650 more. The fish market now shows a sorry picture of excessive greed for profit. It is the same across the country, and hilsa is going beyond the reach of ordinary consumers," he said.

The official also spoke of manipulation of weight as well as price, saying dishonest traders were cheating consumers that way too.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.