While mainly attributing price hikes to a lack of proper monitoring by the ministry, members of the public are calling for stringent measures against violators. A number of traders are also of the view that the ministry’s intervention would help prevent unreasonable price rises, especially for essential consumer goods, according to a report in Al-Madinah newspaper.

A number of Shoura Council members blame the ministry for not taking strict measures against the reckless increase in prices.

Zainul Abideen Bari, a Shoura member, said the ministry’s mechanism to curb unreasonable price hikes is not working properly.

“The ministry’s mechanism to monitor market conditions as well as for slapping fines and publicizing names of violators has been a failure. The ministry’s efforts to curb price rises have not yielded any concrete results in a country like Saudi Arabia,” he said while drawing attention to the fact that existing measures have not been implemented.

Bari pins great hope on the decree issued by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah last month to appoint 500 officials to reinforce the ministry’s market monitoring mechanism.

“We hope that the royal decree will enable the ministry to improve monitoring and implement punitive measures against violators in a way that protects consumers from the greed of traders who resort to recurrent price hikes by exploiting market situations,” he said.

Muhammad Al-Motlaq, another member of the Shoura Council, stressed the need for the strict implementation of regulations to pinpoint violations and punish wrongdoers.

“These regulations would enable the ministry to adopt various ways to take punitive measures against violators, including closure of their shops, imposing fines and publicizing their names in local newspapers. The ministry has so far not fulfilled its responsibilities in an effective manner; this is mainly because of its poor market monitoring mechanism,” he said.

Imad Al-Aslani, a Saudi citizen, said the absence of a monitoring mechanism at the Ministry of Commerce has resulted in some traders unreasonably hiking prices of essential goods. He urged the ministry to take stringent action against such traders.

Khaled Al-Jabiri, another citizen, attributed such practices to the poor monitoring of market conditions by the ministry. He called on the ministry to play an increased role in protecting the rights of consumers.

Mamdouh Al-Aslani, another citizen, noted that violators include illegal workers and some Saudi traders.

Sameer Murad, a businessman, said that the ministry should implement an effective monitoring system to protect the rights of consumers. “The ministry should not show any leniency in dealing with traders who raise prices,” he added.

Meanwhile, Saleh Al-Khaleel, assistant undersecretary for consumer affairs at the Ministry of Commerce, said that the ministry is striving hard to protect the rights of consumers by taking stringent punitive measures against those traders who raise prices unreasonably.

“The ministry receives complaints about such violations on a round-the-clock basis. It conducts probes into such complaints by interrogating concerned traders. If the violations were proved by substantial evidence, the ministry takes punitive measures against the culprits,” he said, adding that penal action includes fines and the publicizing of the names of violators in newspapers at their expense.

On his part, Khaled Qamqamji, director of the ministry’s branch in Madinah, said that the ministry had referred the cases of several traders and firms, which violated the regulations with regard to price control, to the Public Prosecution and Investigation Commission.

“The role of the ministry is to conduct preliminary investigations into complaints of violations and then refer the cases to the commission for an inquiry; cases are then handed over to the administrative court for criminal procedures,” Qamqamji added.