High price of iron
Continuous price hike of construction materials, particularly iron materials, is a matter of serious concern. It is creating instability in the housing sector resulting in the house rent being pushed upwards, which is just adding salt to the sore caused by high prices of essential commodities.
The government has been trying to control the price of iron rod but so far no tangible result can be seen. If fact, price of any commodities cannot be controlled by any government because the price factor of products would depend on the supply and demand in the domestic and international market. The best course for the government is to monitor and maintain the supply and demand. It should strengthen its capacity to intervene in order to prevent unlawful market manipulation by the vested quarters.
It is obvious that the high demand is responsible for high price, but if we try to find the reason as to what has caused huge demand of iron materials, we will find that huge quantities of extra iron materials are used for the purpose of safety and security only, which otherwise has no relationships with the construction itself of a building. If we observe the houses constructed during the good old days we will see that no such extra iron materials were used for the purpose of safety and security. Some government buildings would prove the truth even today. The burning example of use of extra iron materials is that a security cage is built around the driver seat of every CNG scooter.
Since the state has failed to provide security to the life and property of the people, they are compelled to use extra materials for the purpose of security. Each and every house seems to be an iron cage. The gates of the private houses appear to be those of a jail. As the security diminishes day by day, the consumption of iron goes up at the same pace.
This is the point where government has to do something to reduce the demand for iron materials. The lack of safety and security of life and property of the citizens causes unrest and instability in society. We should shoot at the real problem but not the shadow. The government's effort to control the price hike should be linked with the question of security too. If appropriate measures could be adopted to boost up security, then the consumption of extra iron materials would be reduced, which will have a positive impact on the demand and price of iron materials.
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