Chicken prices soar in Kashmir markets

SRINAGAR — With Food Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCSCA) authorities failing to enforce the rates fixed by it for poultry, the chicken prices in the Kashmir markets have skyrocketed. The rate fixed for chicken per kg by retailers across Kashmir is Rs 170 and more.

As per the news agency KNO, the government has set the price of chicken at Rs 130 per kg, but the consumers claim that the sellers are selling chicken at a much higher rate than the government fixed rate.

The poultry sellers seem to be giving no damn to the government rates as people from the whole of Kashmir are complaining that the chicken sellers have no regard for the rates fixed by the government.

Shakeel Ahmad, a resident of Pulwama, said that shopkeepers are selling chicken at Rs 170 per kg and whenever they are being asked about government rates, they complain to the government about wholesale dealers who have hiked the rates.

Zahid Ahmad, a shopkeeper from Anantnag, said that whether the rate is Rs 100 or Rs 200, they earn only Rs 10 per kg as profit but rates depend upon wholesale dealers. “If authorities want to regulate the prices of the broiler chicken, they should act against the wholesale dealers,” he said.

Other shopkeepers said that they are getting the broiler chicken at the rate of Rs 155-Rs 160 per kg in wholesale and how can they sell them below Rs 170 then?

Consumers said that authorities are acting as mute spectators with negligible market checks in almost the whole of Kashmir and the poultry sellers are having a free hand to charge exorbitant rates. The consumers appealed to authorities to increase the market checking in the area so that they will not have to suffer.

Meanwhile, an official of Food, Civil Supplies, and Consumer Affairs acknowledged that rates of chicken have increased in Kashmir and concerned enforcement wings have to be directed to increase market checkings so that consumers won’t have to suffer anymore.