By Saeed Al-Suraihi
I PERSONALLY know and all the smokers also know that smoking is bad for health. It is the most bad habit among all the generations in all age groups.
Those who have developed this bad habit are men and women in various age groups. They may be in their late childhood or very late old age.
I am aware of all this but also equally aware that this does not give the right to tobacco traders and distributors to manipulate with the prices and take advantage of the smokers and exploit them.
Whenever traders come to know that the prices of tobacco may go up, they tend to hide the quantities of cigarettes under their possession so as to sell them at higher prices later.
They store the quantities of tobacco in their warehouses to make more profits by selling cigarettes, on which no fees were imposed and which they bought under the old prices, at the new higher prices.
The consumers do not accept the market manipulation by importers and distributors of cigarettes.
This should not also be accepted by the Ministry of Commerce and Investments, the municipalities and all the other market supervising bodies.
I do not know if the Consumer Protection Society (CPS) also accepts this manipulation or is it giving a blind eye because the smokers have no one to protect them. The CPS may be of the opinion that smokers deserve what happens to them because they have not protected themselves from the bad consequences of smoking.
The market is protected by laws and regulations that organize the process of selling and buying and to ensure the rights of both the traders and the consumers.
Therefore nobody should be allowed to play with the market or to store any commodity waiting for the prices to go up.
These are public laws which are applied on any commodity being offered for sale.
The ministry and the municipalities should realize that being lenient with the traders and distributors of cigarettes may tempt traders of other commodities to do the same. These traders may be enticed to hide these commodities until their prices have hiked to bring them out again for sale.
If the smokers deserve to be manipulated by importers and distributors of cigarettes and tobacco, citizens in general do not deserve the greed and avarice of the traders of other goods such as rice or sugar who may resort to hiding them similar to cigarettes traders.
The recklessness of the ministry and the municipalities in keeping silent over the machinations of tobacco traders may tempt traders of other commodities to follow suit so as to make more gains.
It is the citizen who will suffer in this case.
It is obvious that the smokers have no one to protect them against the greed of the cigarette traders. They are being punished for the very fact that they are smokers.
