Industrialists and exporters do support the Sindh government’s efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the province, however the decisions and strategy made in this regard should have been based on representation and due feedback from the business community; especially of the ports city Karachi.
This was asserted by M Jawed Bilwani, a leading textile industrialist and exporter, and Chief Coordinator of Council of Textile Associations of Pakistan while talking to media on Saturday. Bilwani maintained that sudden lockdown enforced by the provincial government had put the industrial and trading community, mainly exporters, in a big trouble and at financial loss in billions of rupees.
Due to one-sided, what he called, decisions of Sindh Government, there was zero industrial and trading activity in Karachi and other cities and towns of the province. Only in Karachi, there were more than 15,000 industries related to different sectors ; majority of these were export-oriented. Because of the lockdown, no worker could reach the factories which had to led to stuck up of big stock of goods in manufacturing process.
For non-completion of manufacturing process in the required time, the raw materials and semi-finished goods worth billions of rupees would go to waste.
For non-shipment of goods, the export orders and letters of credit (L/Cs) were being cancelled. This would prove a big setback to the country’s exports as the foreign buyers would divert to other countries many of them depart once for all, he added.
The business leader was of the view that if the government had taken the business community on board , there could be made some safe arrangements for workers’ movement to at least keep those industrial units operative which were of essential nature and export-oriented. He added the timely shipment of export goods could be done after taking preventive measures needed for the safety of the workers from COVID-19 pandemic.
“If government gave us grace period of some days before imposing lockdown, we would have finished our urgent jobs like under process manufacturing of goods and make shipments of ready goods. It would have saved cancellation of many export orders and L/Cs,” he remarked.
M.Jawed Bilwani said due to ban on movement of the people it had become impossible to distribute salaries/wages among the workers. Also, he added, the business community wanted to give ration to their low paid workers to manage this difficult situation created by COVID-19.
