Rawalpindi, Pakistan: When chilly weather starts in Pakistan, everybody needs to wear warm clothes and middle class people use first option to visit old and used cloth markets popularly known as Lunda Bazar of their respective city. This year, lunda bazaars are not helping low-income people to buy something good as prices are too high to use this option of wearing warm cloths.
The winter rain has largely been welcomed by the people because it will help subsiding the prevailing smog which has blanketed many plain areas of the Country especially Punjab, causing miseries to the people.
As per the Pakistan Metrological Department, though the current rain spell in various of the Countries including Islamabad and Rawalpindi will not be of great intensity but it will continue till Wednesday night.
But as the temperature has witnessed certain decrease, people are rushing towards markets and weekly bazaars for purchasing winter clothes such as sweaters, coats and jackets etc.
In the meantime, lunda bazaars are attracting a large number of people especially low-income people who mostly rely on such markets as they sell various used-items for much lesser prices.
However unlike the past, this year even people are finding it difficult to buy stuff of their choice in lunda bazaars because winter clothes are being sold for higher prices.
People are of the view that this year winter has arrived quite late; therefore people have begun visiting lunda bazaars now and no jam-packed situation is being observed there but even then, the vendors are selling winter stuff for higher prices.
Talking to the Dispatch News Desk (DND) news agency, Shaukat Ali, a government employee who went to a Lunda Bazaar in Rawalpindi told that prices of winter clothes had surged in Lunda Bazaar as well. He said that the prices of winter stuff had increased 50 to 60 percent this year as last year he bought a coat for Rs 800 but now he had to pay Rs 1,700 for that.
Another buyer from Bhara Kahu area of Islamabad, Arshad Hussain, told the DND that he bought three sweaters from a Lunda Bazaar for Rs 450. He said that though he wouldn’t call them much expensive but yet as compared to previous years, it cost him more.
