Consumers are facing a severe economic strain due to the prices of essential food items, such as, coconut, rice, vegetables, fresh fish, dry fish, eggs and potatoes going through the roof daily in the market sans any mechanism for its control.
Coconut prices across the country have increased as cultivators and traders claim low production resulted in the price hike.
However, the price of a single coconut rose to Rs. 100/- in recent days as traders in the country’s coconut triangle claim a coconut never reached the Rs. 100/- mark in the country’s history.
The Deputy Chairman of the Coconut Cultivators Association, Jayaratne Jayaskera blamed the government for failing to control the price of coconuts.
Chairman of the National Movement for Consumer Rights Protection, Ranjith Vithanage said the country is short of 0.7 Billion coconuts adding the government has failed to manage the requirement.
The government has decided to control the price of coconut in the future and set maximum retail price of a coconut at 70 rupees.
Consumer Affairs Authority officials armed with improvised measuring gadgets will be deployed to check on the sizes of coconuts to implement the latest gazette notification on price control.
Consumer Affairs Authority Chairman and retired Major General D.M.S. Dissanayake said that district offices had been adviced to measure the circumference of coconuts to determine if they were being sold at the controlled prices gazetted on Friday.
The gazette notification said a coconut with a circumference of 13 inches and above could be sold at a maximum price of Rs 70, a coconut between 12 and 13 inch circumferance at Rs 65 and a coconut below 12-inch circumference at Rs 60.
The authorities who introduced the pricing mechanism based on the measurements of the circumference of coconuts have now become laughing stock among the people now forced carry a tape for circumference measurement when buying coconuts.
(LIN)