The government is yet to make its market monitoring and supervision mechanism more effective to ensure that the service seekers and consumers are not cheated by the service providers and wholesalers, retailers, hoteliers, restaurants, medical stores, pharmaceuticals, dairy production houses and so on.

It does so in its own ways rather than doing on a regular basis.

However, it was encouraging to know that the Department of Supply Management and Consumer Protection has started doing market monitoring “Two pathology labs sealed; grocery, meat shops warned” (THT, August 30, Page 2).

The government has all the systems and mechanisms.

However, most of them are in dormant condition, slow, inactive, ineffective and corrupt. Some of them only are found to be effective. Because of these reasons, the consumers and service seekers continue to be harassed and cheated on a regular basis.

Nobody listens to their grievances. There is no proper system or place for lodging their complaints. Prices of consumer goods and medicines differ from store to store.

Most of the retailers and restaurants do not bother to display price lists although it is mandatory. This is because of the lack of regular and strict market monitoring and supervision of the concerned officials and authorities.

The Department should regularise its market supervision all the time not only in Kathmandu but in other parts of the country as well.

This will gradually help control the market prices, improve the quality of the goods and services and discourage the proliferation of black markets.

Rai Biren Bangdel, Maharajgunj

Opportunity

“As a home to the highest peaks in the world, there are endless opportunities for this country to flourish in the tourism department”, writes a London-returned man in his article “Why Nepal?” (THT, August 29, Page 6).

The optimism exuded by the young man on tourism opportunities and his determination to contribute productively ‘for a change that my motherland desperately requires’ is highly appreciable.

Alas, if all our diaspora thought like that and returned to Nepal we would be a developed nation in no time.

But not all share this noble thought, including my cousin’s husband, who as a newspaper delivery man in London for the past three decades, has bought two houses in London and built two in Kathmandu.

As for the high prospects of the tourism department, I recently met two former tourism professionals. One has become a local bus khalasi on the Balaju Ranipauwa highway and the other, a trekking expert, has become a walking bag vendor.

Their fate might change if we can bring Buddhists from ‘our next door neighbour’ China or from kitten-to-tiger economies in its periphery.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu