Karachi Chamber demands ease in lockdown, resuming trade activities

Karachi Chamber demands ease in lockdown, resuming trade activities

KARACHI: Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) has demanded the government to ease lockdown and allow resumption of trade activities.

In a statement Siraj Kassam Teli, Chairman Businessmen Group (BMG) and Former President KCCI said that Coronavirus is not going to go anywhere and it is going to stay with us for the time being.

“It has become part of our lives and we will have to live with it. We cannot afford to keep the businesses closed forever so the government will have to devise ways and means of how to safely get back to daily routine life in the presence of the virus.”

He demanded that it was high time to give the much-awaited relief to perturbed small traders/ shopkeepers by announcing ease in the ongoing lockdown from fifteenth of Ramadan onwards so that members of the business & industrial community, particularly small traders/ shopkeepers could recover some of their losses during the last two weeks of Ramadan when the business activities in all commercial markets become bullish ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr.

He said that despite facing severe hardships during the prolonged lockdown, the entire business & industrial community especially small traders/ shopkeepers suffered heavy losses yet they fully cooperated and supported all the decisions taken by the government.

Hence, they must now be given some relief in the shape of easing the lockdown under a pre-defined formula in which all the small traders/ shopkeepers be granted the permission to reopen their businesses with an only condition to strictly adhere to the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which must be mutually agreed and devised in such a manner that all these SOPs are doable and ensure minimum risk.