Observing that people’s lives have become miserable in the country, BNP standing committee members have demanded the government step down immediately for its failure to control price hikes of the essentials.

At a virtual meeting, they also urged the government to repeal its decision to increase the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), said a press release signed by party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Tuesday.

He said the BNP policymakers strongly criticised the government for its utter failure to control the market since the prices of daily necessities continued to rise unabated even during the holy month of Ramadan.

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“The meeting felt that the prices of essential items are rising by leaps and bounds due to market manipulation by the government-backed various syndicates and extortion by police and the ruling party on the roads and highways,” he said.

Besides, Fakhrul said their policymakers viewed that the rise in transportation costs due to repeated hikes in the prices of fuel oil and gas also contributed to pushing up the prices of commodities.

“The suffering of the people has reached an extreme stage,” the BNP standing committee members told the meeting held on Monday.

Fakhrul said the meeting also observed that farmers, workers, lower-income people and small traders have been left in the lurch as the prices of all commodities, including rice, pulses, oil, salt, sugar, vegetables, fish and meat and gas, fuel oil and water because of greed and corruption of the government-backed traders.”

He said the meeting expressed deep concern over the recent suicide of two farmers of the Santal community in Rajshahi’s Godagari upazila due to the non-availability of an irrigation system in Barind region of the country that has been facing an acute shortage of water.

Stating that farmers also took their own lives on the same ground in the past, the BNP policymakers alleged that the government is failing to provide farmers with agricultural inputs, irrigation, fertilizers and seeds due to corruption and politicisation.

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Fakhrul said their meeting strongly condemned and protested the government’s move to increase the prices o LPG. “The meeting felt that the price hike was made in an unreasonable manner to create business and profit opportunities for ministers and (the PM’s) advisor.”

The meeting demanded that the government immediately brings the prices of LPG to a tolerable level.