Bureau Report
PESHAWAR: The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa passed the anti-hoarding bill on Tuesday to penalize those involved in hoarding. The bill stipulates that the whistle-blowers on the hoarders will get the reward, while the ones involved in the wicked practice will be penalized with a sentence of up to three years and fined for as much as half the amount of hoarded material.
The anti-hoarding law will now authorize the magistrate to seal the store of a hoarder without prior notice or warrant. The whistle-blower of the hoarding practice will qualify for a 10 percent reward of total material monetary value. The bill was tabled in KP provincial assembly after a number of complaints were received amid COVID-19 led lockdown.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had proposed a similar ordinance back in April, that anyone found involved in hoarding, will have to face a three-year-imprisonment and fine of upto 50 percent value of the amount recovered. It said that special magistrates would supervise the cases against hoarders and would be bound to decide on them within a month. The ordinance’s postulated range in the province covered 32 commodities, it outlined. It is pertinent to note that Prime Minister Imran Khan chaired a meeting the previous month to review prices of basic commodities and hinted at action against hoarders in the country.
