THE sky-rocketing prices of oil and their implications for the financial and economic health of the country have forced the Government to re-impose austerity measures to help minimize the negative impact. The measures announced on Thursday envisage tightening business operating hours and restricting public events while reducing fuel allocations for official vehicles by 50 per cent for three months. With immediate effect, shops, markets, shopping malls, bazaars, departmental stores, grocery stores, general stores and retail shops will close by 9.00 pm throughout the week; marriage halls by 10.00 p.m. and eateries/fruit and vegetable shops will close at 11.00 p.m.
Energy conservation and austerity measures are understandable in the given circumstances but their impact will be limited until and unless all the provincial governments too tread the same path. As always, the business community is expressing apprehensions that early closure will affect their businesses but it is not closure but curtailment of business hours, encouraging shoppers to change their habits. It is also important to note that essential activities have been exempted from the restrictions announced by the Government. However, one fails to understand the relevance of imposing the decision to serve one dish during marriages, which, otherwise, remained unimplemented throughout in the past. Reduction of fuel for official vehicles by fifty percent for three months might help conserve fuel to some extent but it is more important to curb misuse of official vehicles. A five per cent monthly reduction in non-employee-related expenditure for the current financial year could badly affect working of different organizations and ministries as their budgets already witnessed a squeeze during the last few years despite extreme inflationary trends. Restrictions on foreign visits and a ban on officially sponsored seminars, conferences and training sessions are also understandable. Where such events are unavoidable, departments have been directed to use government-owned venues, including auditoriums, committee rooms and other official facilities. The Government has done well by not deciding to opt for ‘work from home’ as this badly harms the working and functioning of the Government than delivering any worthwhile economic benefit. Similarly, it is known to all that the strategy of online classes damaged careers of millions of students as class-room learning cannot be substituted by online lectures, especially in the absence of required level of technology and its lack of access by all segments of the society. In this backdrop, it is appreciable that Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat has rejected reports of a proposed smart lockdown in schools, confirming that educational activities will proceed as usual across the province. We hope the federal and other provincial governments will follow suit.
