Violence and strikes sending businesses in Karachi down the drain

By: Ismail Dilawar

KARACHI – Frequent incidents of violence and the consequent sense of paranoia in the country’s financial hub have seriously jeopardized businesses, and put a majority of the traders and businessmen under heavy debts during recent years.

The traders claim to have become insolvent due to violence, such as politically-motivated targeted killings, and frequent strikes that partially or completely cease the businesses activity in the port city. “Almost 80 percent of the traders in the city are breathing hard under heavy debts which they owe to the goods’ suppliers,” said Muhammad Atiq Mir, chairman of the All Karachi Tajir Ittehad (AKTI), a body representing around 400 city markets. This, he said, was because of the politically and religiously motivated violence, which is now the order of the day.

Mir said most of the traders’ shops were filled with suppliers’ goods. “Due to consistently increasing inflation and violence, the traders’ income has been going down,” he said. “Irrespective of the reasons, each day of suspended businesses activity costs the city traders at least Rs 2.5 to Rs 3 billion,” he said, adding that this amount reflected the revenues only. “Daily trading activity can roughly be estimated at over a trillion rupees,” said Mir, who also chairs the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (FPCCI) standing committee on small traders and cottage industries.

200-yard house in Karachi has 639 registered voters

The apex court had said that over 40 million votes were found to be bogus. The court was informed that 37 million fake votes were cast in previous elections.

By Hassan Siddiqui

Karachi: While measures are being taken in Karachi to purge voter-lists of bogus members, a 200-yard house located in a posh locality in the city has been found to have 639 voters registered to it, reported local correspondent of British web-site The News Tribe.

The single storey residency located in block 2 of PECHS area is known as ‘Kashana-e-Zaheer’ and cannot house more than three families at a time. Half of these bogus voters are women while 333 among them men.

The said house is located in the NA 251 constituency, which is considered stronghold of the province’s second largest political party MQM.

In the previous elections, Waseem Akhtar and Raza Haroon of the same party were elected member National Assembly and member provincial assembly respectively.